It was a quiet evening in the house tonight, so I buckled down to some airplane work.

First up, a few pictures of the counterbalance ribs and skin. You can see here I’ve already drilled the counterbalance weight. This time, I used some machine oil to lube the drill bit. No issues.

After drilling, I countersunk the weight using a 1/2″ drill bit.

Then, back into the skin it goes for my dirty-dimpling maneuver. I put the #10 screws in the #8 dimpled holes (with the countersunk counterweight behind it).

After putting some tape over the screw heads, I hit it a few times with the flush set. After the big reveal…

Nicely dimpled screw holes.

Or I could just buy #10 dimple dies. Nah.

Next up, some matchdrilling of the left elevator spar to the inboard rib.

Apparently, I skipped ahead in the pictures to matchdrilling the skin. I might’ve positioned the skin here to show off my panel mockup.

I took this wide-angle shot just to remind myself that I’d completed the matchdrilling on the skins.

Then, I matchdrilled the elevator horn.

Once everything was matchdrilled, it’s time to disassemble, deburr, scuff, dimple.

Here are the spar reinforcement plates, edge-finished, deburred, scuffed, and ready for priming.

Some prep work on the inboard rib and tab spar. Van’s wants you to countersink either piece for flush rivets (not for any real flush reason…I think they need to be #40 size holes, and they don’t give you any universal head AN470AD3 rivets). Anyway, per standard practice, I dimpled both.

I skipped a few pictures here, but here’s the elevator skeleton, primed.

After some more deburring, scuffing, and dimpling the skin, I got it on the fancy paint booth and primed the remaining interior surfaces.

So about here, I realized I had another hour’s worth of effort in me, and it wasn’t quite bedtime. Let’s rivet something!

I started with the counterbalance and tib rib.

Then I moved on to the spar. I set 33 of the 34 rivets, then had trouble with the very last one.

Here’s the front side, with the new rivet in place and the old rivet as example for any future rivets who want to give me trouble.

This is the outboard set.

Shop heads.

3.5 hours total, 34 rivets, with one needed to be drilled out. Maybe I’ll get to skin riveting later this week.