There was no waffling on whether or not to use pop rivets or solid rivets on the bottom spar this time around. The time savings of the pop rivets is just too much. I don't know why people spend hours and hours figuring out how to put solid rivets here! I'd rather finish and fly the plane.
The second trim tab spar was riveted in. As expected, the pre-punched holes lined up perfectly, so there was no issue with not having match drilled it in assembly. For now, only the bottom side is riveted. The top isn't riveted until the trim tab hinge is done and in place, which I will do along with the trim tab itself.
The counterbalance ribs were next. The result of this has me scratching my head a bit. While it's fine, the trailing half of the ribs where the elevator skin attaches doesn't sit super level with the rest of the elevator. It's that way on both top and bottom, so it's almost like the rib is just slightly undersized, making the skins dip inward at the edge of the elevator. I did a lot of bending with seaming pliers to get it as level as I could. I checked and rechecked, and there's nothing that I can see that I did wrong, so I think it's just how the parts are made. Like most things so far, this will only be noticeable to me, and I'm sure I'll forget about it when the plane is in the air.
The trailing edge was next. Because the trim tab takes up half of the elevator length, the trailing edge is pretty short compared to the right elevator. Using the aluminum angle as a straight edge is kind of a pain because it takes a while to drill through, so I thought I'd try using a piece of plywood instead. This was every bit as straight (maybe straighter actually) as the aluminum angle and much easier to drill through. I match drilled through the top skin, wedge, bottom skin, and into the wood and clecoed in place while the 3M tape set up.
I used the same drill press setup for countersinking the wedge as I did for the rudder and right elevator wedges. It works really well and with such a short piece of wedge was done quickly. Then I back riveted the trailing edge and filed down the portion of wedge that was sticking out. Here's where I noticed that I probably goofed in my initial match drilling setup. I don't think my skins were completely flat when I was drilling the wedge and bottom skin, because the amount of wedge sticking out from the top and bottom skin is not the same (meaning the angle on top and bottom wasn't perfect so the skins don't meet at the same point on the wedge). The edge is the straightest I've made so far though. The skin difference of where it meets on the wedge is probably on the order of 1/32-1/16", so not exactly something that will likely matter in the performance of the plane.
The last step for the elevator was finishing up the 3 aft rivets in the counterbalance rib (left open to make dealing with the trailing edge easier). The last aft rivet was a nightmare. The space is too small to get any kind of a squeezer yoke in, and after 3 attempts at bucking it (and drilling out the rivets 3x), I gave up and decided to just use a pop rivet on the bottom side. I should have just gone with a pop rivet to start with.
I didn't get much done on the trim tab itself, but started by making a couple of blocks and foam ribs for it. The foam ribs will be Prosealed in place, basically as stiffeners, and the wood blocks are used to pinch the skin down until the Proseal cures.
