It is way too cold to finish priming the stringers, so I decided to go ahead and try to get my riveting muscles back in shape by riveting a couple of bulkheads to the bottom skin. In an ideal world I would have clecoed the entire tailcone together before riveting anything, but riveting these bottom portions alone would be next to impossible (no physical way to reach over the side skins and buck rivets while also using the gun underneath). I don't want to lock the structure in place until it's all clecoed together and I can verify there's no twist, but I don't think there's any harm to riveting a few pieces together prior to doing that. I laid the skin upside down and let the bulkheads hang down underneath it. Aside from the fact that it's obviously been a while since I've riveted, this worked fine.
I was going to cleco on the baggage bulkhead so I could also rivet the bellcrank rib to the bottom skin, but I realized that dimpling the holes in the rib chipped off all of the primer around every hole. This is the rib that I tried the Rustoleum primer on. I guess the verdict is in - it does not adhere anywhere near as well as the Ekoprime. I sprayed a quick shot of the Rustoleum back on the rib to cover up the bare aluminum. I'll see what it looks like tomorrow, but given the temp, I'll probably have to hit it with a heat gun to make it to where I can rivet without just rubbing it off.
I was just going to quickly spray the stringers with the rattle can primer, but not anymore. That stuff is probably fine if it's sprayed out after all work is done and it's not handled much. Otherwise, it's just too fragile. I'll figure out a way to spray the long stringers with the Ekoprime. Granted, there's already one layer of primer on the skins, so realistically I could probably leave the stringers bare alclad and not worry about it.
