Today I was hoping to rivet the skins to the HS when some experienced help came by, but he was unable to stop by. So I went ahead and riveted the Front Spar together and cleco'd the ribs to the skin in preparation for riveting - but......... I was too nervous to try riveting the skins by myself. Maybe I'll try it tomorrow, don't want to screw them up. So I moved ahead and started on the Vertical Stablizer. First cleco'd the spar stiffener to the rear spar, then cleco'd all the hinge brackets to the rear spar and then added all the ribs (after prepping them of course). I did have some help stop by - Bill Penney (a coworker) who is interested in his own RV8 project wanted to check it out - so I put him to work with clecos and drilling as seen below. While he was there we cleco'd on the forward spar and then final drilled all the holes to #40. Then cleco'd on the Vertical Stablizer skin and final drilled that to #30. After he left, I disassembled it all and went about deburring and edge smoothing. The VS moved along a lot faster than the HS so I guess I better figure out how to rivet cause I'm eventually going to have to tackle the VS skins as well. Tomorrow (if I don't start riveting skins on the HS), I will dimple the VS ribs and spars as appropriate and prep and prime all the VS skeleton components and prep the skins to include dimpling. Wish I was more confident about riveting those darn skins!
Left HS Skin with ribs Cleco'd and ready for riveting
