Riveted rear spars

Today I riveted the elevator rear spars to the left bottom, and right top skins, joining the two half’s of each elevator.

Because the rear spar is around 6 inches forward of the trailing edge, access to the rivets is difficult. I bought the long bucking bar, which makes the process very simple. The bar is specifically shaped for this step, and once inserted between the two skins, a little down force on the back of the bar gives plenty of leverage on the back of the rivet (edge of bench is the fulcrum). The elevator is shimmed up to account for the trailing edge break.

The plans suggest starting with the left elevator to get used to the bucking bar on a bottom skin. It turned out to be easy to use. Here’s what it looks like with the bucking bar between the skins.

With the left elevator rivets bucked, I squeezed all the remaining rivets where the trim tab cutout gives access to the spar.

Then a repeat of the process for the right elevator, this time working with the top skin. Everything went well.

Hard to see in the picture, but this is the row of bucked rivets in the right elevator.

Now that these skins are all assembled, it’s much easier to keep everything organized because there are fewer parts. Will be good to get the front spars attached, that will give me even more space to work.

Tomorrow evening I’ll start riveting the ribs together inside the elevators. Access is going to be hard for the rear rivets, so I’m anticipating it may take a couple of sessions to get it done.