Another 5 hours each on the empennage.
Mistakes happen
We started the dry fit for the stabilator and I messed up a piece (HS-01233, Stabilator Horn Attach Angle). The plans say to be extra cautious drilling. I thought I was cautious enough, but apparently not, and I elongated the hole. Oops. There's another $27 for a replacement. The part itself is always cheap — it's the $15 minimum shipping that makes it expensive.
First rivets
We finally started riveting! We ended up buying the pneumatic squeezer from Aircraft Tool Supply. It arrived missing the ram; ATS sent a replacement that showed up the next day. The pneumatic squeezer makes things so much easier — I would not want to squeeze all these by hand.
Vertical stabilizer complete
We riveted the entire vertical stabilizer, and honestly it went pretty well. Getting the skin to fit without forcing it was the hard part. If I did it again I'd do a better dry fit before priming, because we had to file more off the edges to get the skin on without too much pressure. It's fine — just not as pretty inside as it could have been.
I also had to grind away part of my pull riveter to get it to work with the wedge tool. Tool modification #2 so far; I'm sure there will be more. Shelby was definitely concerned when she saw me taking the belt sander to our perfectly good riveter. She's laughing as I type this.
The vertical stabilizer is done! Rudder next. Shelby says building a plane is just cleco, uncleco, cleco, uncleco, and so on. She's not wrong.
Photos
