October 9, 2006 ...   Apparently, when I was setting up the bracket to pre-drill, something accidently shifted (indicated by yellow arrow). I drilled out the rivets, remade and re-installed a new bracket. Now, it is perfect ! 

Construction of the rest of the vertical stabilizer was very uneventful, and fun.

October 10, 2006 ...   The vertical stabilizer frame is complete!  So far this project has been going very well (in spite of my minor, fixable "goof-ups").  Much of my success is attributed to the fact that the drawings have been extremely accurate.

November 7, 2006 ...   This is the rudder assembly with the skin and rudder hinge pre-drilled; the skin dimpled for the flush rivets, and ready for up-drilling, deburring and final assembly.

November 4, 2006 ...   For all of the exposed skin areas, I am using flush rivets. I was very concerned about the dimpling process; mainly that the pieces would not match up when it came time to re-assemble everything. But those concerns have all been put to rest as all the pieces matched up perfectly, as seen in this photo.

November 8, 2006 ...   When it came time to install the rudder hinge, I followed the advice I found on Jeff Shultz's website and made a simple spacer gauge to keep a nice uniform .057 inch spacing on the hinge, as called for in the drawings.  It basically consists of two pieces of aluminum; .032 and .025 inches thick attached to a piece of inexpensive aluminum flat stock (purchased at Home Depot). If you choose to put a couple rivets in to hold it all together, be sure to leave plenty of space between the rivet head and the working edge of the gauge (indicated by the yellow arrow.)