Thanks Anthony. I don't think my thumbs and/or nerves are quite ready for me to try my hand in anything, however I would love to check that out, and just might.

I thought about what you said about the elevator; I'll check it out, apply a load and see what deflects. The plane has wooden pushrods, and they had to be bent quite a bit to get them straight and not binding on formers. I wonder if this has something to do with it. If you push on one of the rods from outside the plane (like press in on it) you can move it quite a bit. It looks like I'm gonna have a half a week off of flying, so I'll start investigating.

And thanks for that link; it's just what I was looking for!