Rudder leading edge.

Is it successful to de-rivet the pops on the rudder leading edge, straighten back out and have another crack at rolling the edges.
I really struggled with a broom stick and a pair of mole grips to get a satisfactory shape. I used the pipe with the two ratchets for the elevators which came out as good as I hoped.
Any suggestions please?

J-hooks and a sheet of plastic so the control surface will slide as you roll.

I re-did a coupe of sections on the rudder LE but it was hard without doing the whole LE. I think the best approach would be to just remove all the rivets (fairly easy to drill out) and re-do the whole LE with the tubes and ratchets.

The holes will be a little enlarged, so I put an aluminum washer on the ends of the rivets before pulling them. This seemed to make a better grip without any waviness along the edges.

Thanks Jake, so you were able to flatten it out OK and get it to roll to the proper D shape?

salto said:

Thanks Jake, so you were able to flatten it out OK and get it to roll to the proper D shape?

Click to expand...

Not so sure about flattening before re-rolling - but you might be able to "re-shape". I used Dan's method after trying others - it works great. I bought some muffler hangers or similar "U" bolts and cut them to a "J" shape, and drilled holes in bench to position them correctly to allow movement of the whole rudder (on plastic as Dan mentions) as I "rolled" - using PVC taped to edges. You can see how I did elevators on this page: https://turnerb14a.blogspot.com/2016/11/november-30-2016.html.

(NOTE: I don't claim be an expert: copy my methods at your own risk!!)

I'd be more concerned about what happens to holes when you remove rivets - as noted by Jake. If the shape now is functionally acceptable, do you really want to take the risk that comes with a re-do?

salto said:

Thanks Jake, so you were able to flatten it out OK and get it to roll to the proper D shape?

Click to expand...

didn't try to flatten it very much, just taped the edge to a tube and used a method similar to Dan's

In one of the cases where the bends looked ok except for one of the segments, I cut a tube about 1/2 in longer than the section on each end, taped it to the edge, clamped the rudder down and used vise-grips on each end of the tube to twist just the one section.....

Thanks Jake and Turner, the results you got from that technique looks spot on.
Thanks for sharing.