Started to Rivet the VS Spar - 3 hours

Frustration!! I started to rivet the VS rear spar today. Things did not go as well as I hoped.

I ended up having real issues with getting rivets set with the squeezer. Many of my rivets on the brackets where folding over! I'd drill them out, only to have it happen again. I find drilling out rivets extremely nerve racking as there is such little room for error. The easier part for me is to drill the machined head, but getting the shop head and the rivet shaft out is really tough without scraping the work underneath. I also found it extremely difficult to set the rivets that are located at the bottom brackets as the rivets are extremely close to the vertical portions of the bracket. After some time, i noticed that some of my troubles came as I was using the rivets as called out on the plans. Many of them were just slightly over the 1.5 dia rule of thumb and I noticed that if I trimmed them down ever so slightly with the rivet cutter (So that they fit perfectly with the rivet guage) my chances of successfully setting them with the squeezer dramatically improved.  I decided to stop for the night and get some opinions at the EAA meeting tomorrow.

Riveted Stiffeners to Rudder - 3.5 hours

I started in on back riveting the stiffeners onto the rudder skins. It took me a little time to get the hang of it and had to drill some of the rivets out. It always seemed like the rivets at the end were a bit tough to get right. I used some Dow Corning #3145 RTV (Clear) on the last part of the stiffener at the trailing edge. Drilling the rivets out went extremely well, however i was a tad bit concerned geting the aluminum pieces that I drilled out on the ends where I used RTV. I was careful to wipe the excess RTV off so that it would not interfere with the trailing edge piece. But in the end everything turned out well and by the third or fourth stiffener I was rockin and rollin.