The first order of business on the night was to drill out my faulty rivet from yesterday. The drilling ended up going quite well, which is what I was most worried about. I didn’t want to over-drill the hole and make it too wide to accept a new rivet. That was not the case in the slightest. I did have some difficulty breaking off the head and removing the rivet from the hole, but eventually I got where I needed to be, deburred the hole again, and squeezed another rivet in a matter of seconds. I will say that this process is certainly motivation enough to do it right the first time.
On to the main spar of the vertical stabilizer then. Overall, the riveting went pretty well I think. I got used to switching between the cup sets and flat sets for various rivet heads and dialing in the right gap to get the rivets to set to the right depth. Pretty straightforward piece of the puzzle tonight, just moved a little slowly because something about setting rivets felt so permanent that I wanted to feel like I was getting it right. I think I’ve already mentioned this before, and will again I’m sure, but my first shot at using the rivet gun is looming large. The squeezer has been awesome to use and I will continue to use it at every opportunity around edges and anywhere else I get the chance.
Looks pretty good I think. I got a little aggressive on some of the countersunk holes so some of the rivets appear a bit deep, but not out of spec so I’m still pretty happy. No game changers here in terms of poor quality – just striving for perfection throughout the entire build. So far, all of the rivets have been set with the squeezer, but I can see the need to begin my skills with the rivet gun and bucking bar. Fingers crossed I don’t punch a rivet gun sized hole in my stabilizer skin…
I checked each rivet by hand with the gauge to make sure that each one was at least 1.5 times diameter and not too short either. All rivets passed the quality control test! I do feel like some of them get a bit tight on the powder coated brackets, but I’m following the plans to the letter so far.
Total time today = 1.5 hours
Total time empennage = 28.5 hours
Total time aircraft = 28.5 hours