03APR2022
I made some good progress today!
Today started out not so great. I was struggling with getting the l-angles riveted to the channel support and ribs in the elevator. I just couldn't seem to get the rivet gun in there correctly. I ended up drilling out four rivets so that I could take the all the pieces out of the skin. I don't know why this one section seemed so hard, but I was feeling a little defeated. Thankfully Tom showed up and talked me down so that I wasn't too frustrated to continue working, lol. (Also the primer I brushed on didn't turn out the greatest, it's fine, but I'll just stick with the spray gun.)
After I finally got those pieces riveted together and back in the skin, I decided to go back to the horizontal stabilizer and work on the hinge. I had to trim a bit of the hinge off on both ends, then I clamped and started match drilling holes into the hinge. After drilling and deburring everything, I riveted in the doublers and attachment bracket. I had one rivet that didn't pull correctly. I guess I didn't have the gun totally square on it, but the head didn't sit flush against the doubler. I drilled the head off and had to use the dremel to sand it down so that I could punch the back side out.
Bad Rivet
(I already drilled the head off in the picture above, but you can see that it wasn't flush and expanded/mushroomed on the outside)
Build Time: 5 hours, 10 minutes