Over lunch, I started riveting the HS skeleton to the front spar, then realized the next step required primed skins. I grabbed them from their high spot in the garage, then got them prepped and primed.
After a fairly hectic day with family and work, I got back into the garage looking forward to finishing the horizontal stabilizer. Of course, I didn’t get to finish, but I did get pretty far on the left skin.
First, you’re supposed to grab the left HS skin and cleco then rivet the middle forward rib to the top side of the skin. Of course, this is the left HS forward rib. Notice what’s wrong? No dimples. Ugh.
Alright, next, you cleco the tip rib and the middle aft rib to the skin and the aft flange of the forward rib rib to help hold the skin tight. I riveted the top and bottom skins to the forward rib.
Next, I removed the forward sections of blue vinyl for the bays that are about to be closed up by installing the forward spar.
Once the vinyl was removed, I clecoed in the fwd spar, then saw this….
So, I un-cleco-ed and removed the forward spar assembly to buck that one rivet and then reinstalled the forward spar.
After that was done, I blind-riveted the middle aft rib to the forward spar and the middle forward rib with LP4-3 blind rivets.
Once complete, I finished clecoing the skin on the skeleton, then flush-riveted the lower left skin of the HS to the skeleton. I usually cleco every other whole, then rivet, remove the clecos, insert the other half of the rivets, then transfer the blue tape over.
After a handful of rivets, the skin is starting to look smoooooooooth.
After finishing up the lower skin of the LH HS, i flipped it back upright and started in on the upper skin of the L HS.
Here’s a shot of some shop heads in case anyone is interested later.
I think this picture is out of order. Before you start skin-riveting, they want you to use AN470 rivets here on the tip rib. No problemo!
Back to the upper surface of the LH HS skin.
Finally, I capped off the night by finishing the upper surface.
8 rivets and 0.5 hours on the first ribs and skin prep & priming.
103 more rivets on the skin and skeleton during evening hours.
111 rivets and 2.5 hours total today. wuhoo!
