I needed to rib stitch the vertical stabiliser before I could apply the finishing tapes to it and the rest of the fuselage and I had also only got the covering of the horizontal stabilisers to the point of being stitched so that was the task for today. One of the tedious but exacting jobs in rib stitching is marking out and making the holes for the stitches. In order to speed this up I spent some time making a jig. I used the CNC router to create a pattern of holes spaced 1-1/2" apart lengthwise and 1/2" apart side to side in a piece of aluminium strip. Some additional holes were also drilled in the middle of the strip. The centre point of a rib was then marked on the stabiliser in a couple of places and these were lined up in the middle holes in the jig. Then I used a fine taper bit on the soldering iron to make holes for the stitches through the parallel rows of jig holes. The net result was a perfectly straight line of evenly spaced holes along the rib. Then it was a case of putting the stitches in. Luckily I had videoed the demo done in the fabric covering course I'd done so after a quick refresher I completed the stitching of the two horizontal stabilisers and the vertical stabiliser. Rotating the horizontal stabilisers on the spar carry through made it easy to work on them. This leaves just the elevators to be stitched but I need to do the basic covering of these first. 
