I haven't heard from the shipping company itself yet, but I got word from Van's that my fuselage kit will be picked up tomorrow and head this way! Gotta get the last flap done so I can clear a bunch of room!
With freshly primed parts, it was time to start assembling everything. Everything had to be dimpled still, so that was first up, following by riveting the nose ribs and hinges.
After the individual hinges were put together I started riveting them to the spar. You'd think I'd remember all of the ins and outs of doing this since I just did it on the left flap not too long ago. Enough steps have passed since then I guess, because I still had to do some trial and error to figure out the easiest way to rivet everything together. There just isn't much room to get at a lot of these rivets, so it takes some back and forth with different squeezer yokes, rivet gun sets, bucking bar types, etc to land on the easiest way. I guess in defense of my awful memory, each hinge assembly (and even each side of each hinge) takes a slightly different setup to get at the rivets. I suppose shy of writing down what combination works for every single group of rivets, I shouldn't be surprised that I don't remember what I did last time.
After the nose ribs were finished, then the main ribs were riveted to the spar, followed by clecoing on the top skin.
The top side of the nose skins were clecoed on next. The skin/nose rib holes were up-sized to 7/64" holes and riveted with pop rivets.
Back into the cradle it all goes! This part I definitely learned my lesson on last time, so getting the nose skins squeezed together in the cradles and clecoed was far easier this time around.
Last up for today was riveting the skin to the spar. I also got about half of the rivets for the skin and main ribs set. Even though I know the wave in the skin is normal, it's still disconcerting to see! I stopped riveting the main spars when I reached about 2/3 of the way towards the tips. I was having an awful time setting the last few without clinching them. I have to use a narrow bucking bar, which makes it hard to keep parallel to the rivet head. I'll try again tomorrow. Like I did on the left flap, I'm not even going to bother to use a solid rivet in the last hole of the trailing end. With a super tiny bucking bar (a lot of people use a wood chisel with a bucking bar taped to it for the mass), I know I could ultimately get the rivets set, but it's not worth the hassle. I used pop rivets on the left flap, and I'm going to do the same on the right flap. It's just not worth the frustration otherwise. I've been told that before paint, just put a dab of epoxy/micro in each hole of the pop rivets (they're flush style) and you'll have a hard time ever telling them apart from regular solid rivets. They are slightly raised and not perfectly flush just because that's how they squeeze, but I don't care enough to spend hours cussing trying to set rivets in this small area - rivets that in all likelihood would come out sub-par anyway.
