Pop riveting ribs

Last night I finished riveting the ribs together on both elevators. Tonight I made a straight table top to help with steps that require a straight surface.

The rib riveting was less challenging than I thought, and I was able to make some good progress last night. The ribs are in two parts, one part riveted to the each of the skins. Then the two pieces are riveted together. Access to the aft two rivets in each rib is very limited, so a decent amount of time was needed to get each rivet ready to go. In the end it all worked out.

The only issue was an incompletely removed rivet shank, in a place that was very hard to access. I left it in there, as there’s nothing for it to interfere with.

The end result was good, lots of neatly riveted ribs. The front riveted were done with a pneumatic pop riveted, which sped up the whole process.

With those rivets set, I clecoed the front spar assembly to each elevator.

The next few steps include attaching the forward spar, and then riveting the root and tip ribs to the skin, then it’s trailing edge time, servo install, trim tab install, and then rolling the leading edges.