Left Elevator Riveting

Another great night in the shop tonight. First thing’s first, let’s get the inboard rib riveted to the spar.

4 nice AN426AD3-3.5 rivets here.

Then, 4 more rivets, this time AN470AD4-4s to connect the tip and counterbalance ribs to the spar.

Conjunction junction.

Next, we’ll finish the skeleton by attaching the elevator horn to the spar and inboard ribs. 12 more rivets here. I think we’re up to 20 so far.

Yes, the skeleton is currently upside-down.

Then, almost a full 30 minutes of pulling out the interior blue vinyl. Is it time consuming, yes. Does it leave a beautiful untouched surface on the interior? Also yes.

It’s like a work of art.

Now, let’s start riveting on the skin. The manual has you start with these two flush rivets on the top and bottom of the skins to avoid using a blind rivet.

4 more here, but I didn’t count these until the end, stay tuned.

An hour or so passed at this moment in the picture-taking. Bu after doing a bunch of skin to spar riveting, I made it here, to these hard-to-reach rivets.

I did manage to set all of these with no issue, even though they are hard to reach.

Wait, these might be out of order. Here’s an in-progress shot of the bottom of the left elevator as I’m working on riveting the skin to the spar.

Upside down and backwards.

This is now the top side of the left rudder with most of the skin-to-spar rivets complete.

lots of flush rivets, so pretty.

Again, a few minutes pass by without a picture, then…

Here’s a “finished” shot of the top side of the left elevator. 

Yes, there are a few rivets missing at the tab hinge area, but I was having trouble there, time to walk away.

And the requisite bottom of the left elevator picture.

170 plus some rivets over 3.0 hours in the garage. There are still some things to do to finish the left elevator, but it’s definitely getting close.

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Author: Andrew

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