Building a Rans S-21 Kit - Prologue

Now that the crate is empty, it is time to inventory all of this stuff and make sure that they sent everything that they think they sent.

Shelves are starting to fill up.

Saturday 7/18/26 - Since my Dad was kind enough to volunteer to go through the four boxes of hardware and little pieces, I continued with the bigger pieces. I got through the Rudder kit, the Vertical Stab kit, The Horizontal Stab and Elevator kit and the Wing kit getting the big pieces unwrapped, inventoried and put somewhere.

In an effort to avoid thinking that a part is missing when I in fact have it, I tried to instill in myself that nothing gets put away, particularly not taken upstairs, until it is checked off on the master inventory sheet. There have already been some instances that caused me to question my adherence to that policy, but so far, there is no evidence that I have strayed from it.

I wanted to start with the kits more or less int he order that they will be built, tail (Rudder, VS, HS / Elev), wing, fuselage, finish. The tail kits went particularly quickly, but there were still the small bits from the boxes my Dad had to go through.

The wing kit went pretty quickly also as there were several large parts and I didn't yet have the small parts. By the end of the day, about all that was left was the fuselage and finish kits.

Saturday, Sunday 7/25/26 and 7/26/26. I got the first half of the small bits from my Dad and want to get those put away in a way that hopefully, I will be able to find them in the future.

Once again, there weren't too many parts in the tail, so that went pretty quickly. The wings took a bit longer. For the wings, I have all of the little bits in two plastic totes. The wing stuff is in one with the Flap and Aileron parts in the other. For the miscellaneous hardware I used what used to be called a small parts box, but apparently they are now mostly know as tackle boxes.

All the little wing bits.

I am planning to put all of the rivets in one set of containers, all of the bolts in another, nuts in another, etc. There are many of the same part numbers of hardware sprinkled throughout the kits. Rather than having to go to a box for a specific kit to get a specific rivet, I am lumping them all together. It may create a problem in the long run, but it seems eminently logical at the moment.

Misc. odds and ends.

Rivets - As near as I can tell, there are 10,532 rivets in all the kits we have so far. 82% of those are 4 part numbers. It makes sense to have all of the high quantity rivets in their own tubs. The single largest group are the AAPQ-41 rivets that total just over 4,200.

I found a Cherry manual that tells one everything he'd want to know about Cherry Max Rivets.

A few years ago I managed to get my hands on a brand new, never been used 737Max galley cart. I was planning to use it as a tool box, but that proved less than an ideal solution. Now, though, I think it will make a excellent hardware and small parts organizer. As it turns out, the aforementioned tackle boxes fit inside perfectly and there is just the right amount of room for four of them across, if need be.

Almost like they were made for it.

I had a nice little organizer sitting around that will be perfect for the other 18% of the rivets. Unfortunately, it will not fit in the Galley Cart, so it will have to live on top. When I looked around for some tubs to put the large quantity rivets in, I noticed that I didn't have anything the right size. Oh well, time for a trip to the Aviation department at Lowe's. I managed to find some containers that are perfectly sized.

Lots of storage.

The white tubs with white lids will easily hold the 3 smaller quantity rivets part numbers. The clear one on the top is big enough to hold the 4,200+ rivets of the big group, but it will not fit inside the cart either.

The rest of the rivets.

It worked out that in 5 containers I have all of the rivets I will use in the project.

The inventory was going fairly well, but there were two parts that I could not find anywhere and it was starting to bug me. They were both tail parts, one a Rudder Horn Doubler and the other the front spars for the elevator. I spent a good bit of time looking for these, but failed to locate them.

I wasn't too worried yet, though I was getting pretty close. I had already seen how they will wrap parts together from other kits, so I just figured they would be somewhere unexpected. For the doubler, I didn't want to worry until I had all of the stuff from the four boxes I gave my Dad. It is possible that it could be in there somewhere, though I already have the tail parts back.

The elevator spars worried me a little bit more since I had already found the rear spars and I thought, perhaps foolishly, that they would be somewhere close together. They are several feet long, so I know they won't be in the boxes still with my Dad. I even went so far as to look inside the lift struts, inside the front wing spars, in between the rear wing spars, and still nothing. I am still hopeful that they will show up, but the anxiety is ratcheting up slowly.

Saturday, Sunday 8/1/26 and 8/2/26 - In talking with my Dad last night I was encouraged by the fact that he had found the rudder horn doubler in the box of finish kit parts. That would have been the last place I would have looked, well, I guess that was the last place I looked.

As we were talking, my Dad thought there may actually be a bag of rivets missing. If that is the case, it is not unrecoverable. They can be procured elsewhere, though Carl reminded me that the factory where these rivets are made burned down recently and they are becoming unavailable. Maybe I need to lock them in the safe.

I spent the day Saturday continuing with hardware sorting and arranging. When I got to a stopping point, I decided to take another look around for those pesky elevator spars. I had been thinking about it all week and trying to come up with an idea. I was planning to take down everything that was in the long part storage and triple check that they aren't hiding in there somewhere. It just so happened that the first thing I picked up was the Horizontal Stab (HS) spars. They were stuck together and there is a doubler that goes with them and those two were stuck together also. As I grabbed the HS spars, the two spars came apart, with me nearly dropping one of them and, wait. What is that? Is that something in between the two spars? Yes. Yes it is. Could it be? As I nearly drop the whole thing trying to get to the part number label at the far end from where I am holding them, sure enough. They are the missing, well actually not missing, elevator spars. I thought I looked through all that stuff before, but I guess not.

I also looked through my master inventory list for the bag of rivets my Dad thought might be missing and I had already come across them. So, as it stands, as of today, there is nothing that is missing and everything I have come across is accounted for. I still have the fuselage kit and much of the finish kit to go through, but I am now quite confident that everything that is supposed to be there is.

Similar to the wing kit, I have organized the miscellaneous bits and pieces from the finish kit in it's own tackle box.

Finish kit bits and bobs.

Of course, by "organize", I mean put in one place that I will hopefully be able to find when the time comes. There is no real rhyme or reason for why they are in the box the way they are. I sort of just went with what fit where.

A place for everything and everything in a place.

As you can see, I went with a different labeling system o the finish kit parts. On the wing kit I used the handwritten labels that came with the boxes and stuck them on the bottom. The advantage to that is that those labels fit the compartments in the box and having them on the bottom makes it easier to see what is in each compartment, but it also makes reading the labels a little trickier. On this one, I used printed labels put on wherever I could find room. Those are easier to read, but it is harder to see what is in the box. In the end, I think I like the more readable labels with this method.

From here, there is just more inventorying to do.