Today, Rod stopped by in the morning to give me some riveting lessons since I have never bucked rivets before. We worked on riveting the forward rib to the HS skin with me using the rivet gun on the first side (see pic below) while Rod bucked, and then we swapped for the other side. Had a lot of trouble with the forward two rivets as the skin did not want to lay flat on the rib and we ended up with some training on drilling out bad rivets. As a result, I decided to go ahead and build some "clothspin" like stands to both steady the stablizers as I rivet and also to "squeeze" the skin more tightly to the ribs (see next entry). We were able to get both the left and right skins riveted to one rib each (with one side totally complete but have a couple more rivets to get on the leading edge of the other three sides) and then Rod had to depart. Rod also took the time to examine the components I already assembled - the rear and forward spar and gave me some advice on replacing some poorly set rivets (see next entry), and also some tool recommendations (new bucking bar, adjustable set holder for the pneumatic squeezer, and an additional yoke for the pneumatic squeezer to simplify getting it in and around flanges). It's always more tools (read $$$$) but if it makes the job easier and ends in better quality guess I need to get to ordering.
