Finished riveting the bottom center section - 1 hour

Well, I managed to find some time to get back into the garage and I finished riveting the bottom skin of the centre section.

And a little more - 1 hour

Spent a little time riveting. Managed to get about half of the two rivet lines done. I bit tricky to get to solo.

Just a little more - 1.5 hours

Again, need a break from work. Kept riveting, and now I just have to two centre rivet lines to do
 

More riveting on the center section bottom skin - 4 hours

Again, insane busy at work and have to work the entire weekend. I managed to slip out to the garage and set some rivets as my eyes are bleeding from staring at a computer. Managed to get quite a few rivets in.


 

Riveting the Aft fuse - 2 hours

So my buddy Mike was able to stop by for the evening to give me a hand on riveting. We have to finish up the very back of the Aft Fuselage. This is one area I just cannot do solo. Very very tricky bucking but we did well.



To make matters worse, the fit on my aft side of the bulkhead, makes the riveting quite tricky due to the tight spacing of the rivets in the flange and the angle of the bulkhead. All things considered, we did well.

More riveting the bottom skin - 2 hours

Work has been insane lately. Just no time to work on the RV. I managed to sneak out into the garage and do a little on it. I set a few more rivets solo. Going well.
 

Started riveting the bottom center section skin - 2.5 hours

I started the evening off by cleco’ing the bottom skin to the centre section. Feeling on a roll, I started to rivet. Fit was a bit tricky on the F-705 bulkhead, but little bit of TLC soon aligned the holes to accept a rivet. Well sure enough I had set a few by the end of the night solo.

Riveted the F-705 bulkhead - 6 hours

Well here is some fun riveting, I cleco’d the F-705 bulkhead to the seat ribs, and then started to install the luggage ribs to the F-705 bulkhead.


I struggled for a while to figure out how best to rivet this. I ended up bucking all of them. Nearly all are shop side forward using the double offset and extra long rivet set. These I did all by myself, no bucking partner was available. And yes I was sweating bullets the whole time. I soon ran into one tricky spot. Middle rib, Pilot side. The rivet has slumped, drilled it out, slumped it again. Now I’m worried it will happen a third time.

 I decided not to be a hero, pulled out the cherry max gauge and figured out how to solve the problem. A CR3213-4-2 rivet saved the day.

After that the riveting went very smooth all things considered. 

I was finally left with the top most rivets which access is hindered by the angle in the seat rib. After much head scratching. Changing squeezer yokes. The only way possible to get these set was to you a steel bucking bar I’ve never used. I went to it.....and it worked. Wow!
 

And done!

Then I noticed a critical miss. I didn’t dimple the bottom of the F-705 flange. I was just too excited to start riveting. I cleaned the holes, and dimpled with the squeezer. That is very tight space. 

I cleaned and reprimed the holes. I called it a day.
 

Started assemble of the Center Section - 4 hours

Well...Quite the interesting day on the build. Learned a lesson today.

I cleco’d the ribs spar and rib doubler together and drove a rivet. Set beautifully. Then I noticed that I couldn’t fit the next rivet in the hole above. The doubler shifted a bit during riveting and the cleco’s didn’t hold it enough to stop the movement. Since I couldn’t move the doubler (it was so tight), I toyed with the idea of drilling out the hole. But that would likely oblong the hole. I decided to drill out the rivet, which turned out to be very tricky. I ended up oblong the hole in the doubler. Crap!

Ok, Made a new doubler. Started riveting it....Soon realized It wasn’t 100% perfect. The AN3 bolts didn't want to slide into place. Drilled out two rivets now. Had to make a third doubler. Slid the AN3 bolts in, cleco’d it. Started riveting, but first rivet slumped bad. Drilled it out again. Set it again. Better! But not perfect, Crap! Well it sucks, but I decided not to do anything more with it as it will make it worse. All in all, its the only questionable rivet in the entire session, the rest are all set well so, I'll let this slide.  


Rest of the rivets went very well.

But after I was done I found out I had drilled the AN3 holes in the doubler upside down. The fit is perfect, the only thing it did is it put the long side of the doubler toward the bottom rather than towards the top. So yup...This is the boo boo that gives the plane character. Nobody will know about it unless you are one of the few people that read this blog. Stings, but I will get over it.

The rest of the riveting went extremely well. Go figure. Used both the double offset rivet set, and the super long set with a bucking partner.