Just a couple of hours in the garage today, but I managed to complete several more steps in the plans. First I riveted the skins and spar on both sides. This was fairly straightforward, with my 3-inch squeezer yoke reaching 90% of the rivets. I bucked several towards the bottom, and the top three, where access was a little more challenging.
Then I set the middle rivet in the forward skin overlap, and was disappointed to see the skin lifting a little. Looks like the break I put in the left skin was insufficient to pull the edge down completely flush. Here’s a picture of the overlap once I had all the rivets in place. There’s not much I can do about this now, without some major disassembly, or drill, increase the break, then pop rivet the end back together. I don’t think that would be worthwhile, and in any case, I’m going to leave it as-is for now.
I then riveted on the top rib, except for the pop rivets. I’m going to figure out my pop riveting issue before putting any more rivets in. There are pop rivets in the aft 3 holes on each side, and two more attaching the top rib to the spar.
Hi Neal
I guess that is not a structural issue and will be hidden when the fairing piece is fitted with the light on it.
Great progress