Ok, now we’re adding in some exciting parts. Enough gussets, let’s add some steps and shit.

The steps are something I’ve looked forward too. The prewelded pieces are a real piece of work. Lightweight, for steel, and amazing welds and fabrication made these a lot of fun to work with.

My concerns: The plate of the step can lack the form of the side skins in some builds. I’ve see where gaps at the aft of the rectangular step plate make for the appearance of sloppy work. I didn’t want this.

I’ve also heard that steps that aren’t symmetrical can induce yaw into the finished plane. I’m skeptical here. I mean, how are we sure its the steps? And with nearly all finished planes needing some yaw trim, isn’t it just another thing that will be adjusted in phase one?

My main concern? I’m about to pop 18 small holes and one big one into the side of my “nearly” blemish free fuselage. Ok, that’s a bit hyperbolic; there are plenty of blemishes and the big hole is already there. Still.

First things first, I needed to take about 1/8″ off the tube to get the step to fit in far enough. Out comes the angle grinder, which made short work of the steel. While I was shaving the tube, I rounded the aft bottom corner per the provided drawing, and added a small radius on the other three corners.

Once all the trimming was done, it was time to start pounding. It was clear to see that if I wanted to avoid gaps, and also avoid significant warps/distortions in the surrounding skin–another issue I’ve seen builds suffer from–I was going to have to adjust this mounting plate to fit the curve of the skin.

I’d say that it took roughly eight fitting sessions, each with about two–three minutes of pounding with a hammer. Not all out, not framing hammer sinking nails with one swing, but firm taps with a standard hammer to get this treated steel to move. Parts had to be bent in, parts had to be pushed out, the bottom corer needed a lot of work.

But once it fit, it fit well. Some small adjustment to the skin to make sure it was clear of the weld, then I was happy.

Next I had to pop some holes into this thing, and that, too, was easier said than done.

A line of holes need to line up with the interior rib flange. This means that a line of rivets needs to overlap a line of rivets. Luck would have it that two of these rivets overlapped nearly identically, so I drilled out the existing rivet and opened it up to a #4 and based the rest of the holes off of that.

Getting the rivets in as close to a perfect grid as I could was another thing high on my priority list. I’ve seen some that looked like they popped their holes with a scatter gun and some buckshot. That’s a bit rough, and I’m sure those folks were fine craftsmen, but I did want mine to look more organized.

After marking the shared rivet against the other rivets, all holes except the shared rivet and its neighbor were drilled. Then the piece was clecoed to the plane, where the shared rivet was backdrilled. The step was again removed, where the final rivet hole was drilled based on the new hole for the shared rivet, then back to the plane to match drill that to the skin.

The step was primed with Akzo because of the durability it offers. I did get some other primer that didn’t offer the green and instead would have looked a little more at home with the greys of the metal and primed fiberglass, but I waivered at the last minute and went back to the Akzo.

Before riveting I drilled out the delrin/nylon plastic mounting blocks and match drilled the mounting bolts to the baggage rib.

The rivets were sunk really easily. Plenty of access, just a straight universal rivet set and tungsten bucking bar.

I’ve later reviewed builds that had countersunk rivets in place of universal rivets. I’ve heard there’s no strength difference between the two types of rivets, which makes me now wish I would have thought to do this. I’d probably want to check with Van’s prior, but looking back in the instructions I see that id doesn’t even specify 426/470, just AD4 rivets. Balls.