This weekend I finished riveting the top right side skin. This seemed to take a long time, mostly because I ended up removing and redoing several rivets. The angle and awkwardness of access made for a hard time setting these rivets. All of them had a tendency to bend over, making for a bad rivet head. After much experimenting, and a tip from another builder, I found that pre-squeezing the rivets just a small amount made a big difference. The rivets tend to bend within the first 2-3 hits from the rivet gun. Keeping it straight for those first few hits all but ensured a good looking shop head. By pre-squeezing the rivets with the pneumatic rivet squeezer, I was able to keep the rivet straight for that initial compression. This really only worked in some of the rivet holes where I was replacing a rivet and the hole was slightly enlarged (but not enough to up-size the rivet). It also took a lot of practice to get a properly squeezed rivet; straight and not too fat to fit in the hole.
On the last rivet, my bucking bar slipped off the rivet head, and I managed to make a small mess of the bulkhead flange. Luckily it’s just a small dent and not a crack. Annoying way to finish the otherwise good session.
