Test Rudder 2. Varying the Approach

I'm back at this with test rudder 2. I feel like if I slow down a bit I may have more success. Specifically I'm going to try to bend this in steps with about 24 hours in between. The hope being that the slower process will allow for the plywood to take a permanent deformation to the first bend before asking it to bend further. The first step completed was to clamp it at the trailing edge, since that is reliably accomplished.

I'm going to measure the total gap at the spar and try to cut that in half tomorrow. Then I will go for closed on Thursday.

There are a couple of other things worth mentioning:

Its been raining reliably lately, I left the shed heater on in the hopes of raising the temperature a bit and increasing the relative humidity.  I don't think this is really that much of a determining factor, but it was one of the coldest days we've had when I was trying to bend Test Rudder #1, which I'm sure only hurt my chances for success.

The other thing to mention is that I think little by little my epoxy goop mix has gotten thicker and thicker (its fun adding the powders). On TR1 it was like mayonnaise and Benrd's instructions show the stuff pouring, closer to a syrup.  This may be a big deal because when cleaning cured epoxy off squeegees I was astounded at the flexibility of the cured epoxy. At the other extreme I was amazed at the stiffness of the cured filled epoxy goop. So if backing off the fillers gets me a cured bead with some compliance, that will only help.