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Let the riveting begin!

Hours: 10.0 Manual Ref: Page 6-4, Steps 6 and 7; Page 6-5, Steps 1, 2, and 3; Page 6-6, Steps 1 through 8 Partner: N/A

At long last, I’ve driven my first rivet! I knew this was going to be a long and involved project, but just the vertical stabilizer took a huge amount of time to rivet together. Good thing I like a challenge :-).  I marked the first driven rivet head in black with a sharpie.  I have no idea if the mark will stay there, but it’ll be neat to look back on when the whole thing is done.  Here are some pictures of the progress.

Note: There is a step 9 on page 6-6 that I haven’t yet completed.  It is to rivet rear spar caps to the rear spar below where the skin meets the spar.  I don’t have a 3/32 AN470 squeezer set, and my arms are too tired to use the rivet gun at this point, so I’ll have to re-visit this step when I’ve recovered.