Not a lot pictures today. I made more progress in terms of education than actual build progress. There is definitely a learning curve to riveting. As usual, the first rivets of the day were the hardest to get to. If following the steps outlined in the plans, you insert the spar and ribs into the skins before riveting the inboard rib to the spar. Getting at it is nearly impossible. It looks easy enough, but the spaces are just too small to fit a bucking bar, squeezer, or rivet gun into because of the spar attach angle. I finally got the 3 rib to spar rivets driven, but it took forever and they are kind of a mess. I tried orienting the rivets in multiple directions, but it didn't really matter much in the end. I'm still contemplating whether or not I'll drill these out and try again, but I'm not sure that the next round would be any better. They're solid, just not pretty.
Following that, the education rolled into how to rivet skins, which will be a huge chunk of the build. In general, it went really well, but I did learn a few things. Lesson one, focus on the rivet gun, not the bucking bar! On my very first rivet, I was concerned about whether I was forming a good shop head, so watched the bucking bar. Oops. You really have to watch the rivet gun to make sure it doesn't move off of the rivet and skate over the skin. So rivet number one ended up with a slight dent in the skin as my gun moved off the rivet. It's on the bottom skin, and is really not all that noticeable, but I'll probably hit it with bondo when I prep for paint.
That lesson learned, I made sure to focus on the rivet gun, and all of the other rivets turned out great. The next thing I realized is that if you're going to use tape to protect the skin while riveting, you should put it on the rivet so it's used just once as opposed to putting it on the rivet set itself and using it over and over from rivet to rivet. It just gets too beat up when on the rivet set, gums up, and sticks to the skin. Without tape, the rivet set mars the skin, but putting tape over the rivet heads themselves not only holds them in place, but also protects the skin. In the future, I'll insert a bunch of rivets at once, put tape over them, and set them one after another.
