Today was my first furlough day. I plan to do max airplane work on each of these involuntary days off. I completed the top side riveting on the edge of the horizontal stab and flipped it over to rivet the bottom. Made it almost all the way without a bad rivet, then had one in the corner that was not very flush, so I drilled it out and replaced it. Next I riveted the tip rib and inner rib to the rear spar. These rivets all went well. Finally set the blind rivets to join the rear spar to main rib, HS-708. First major sub-component complete!
I decided to put the stab back up in the jig to pull the plastic off and store it while I worked on the vertical stab. Once I got it up there and was pulling the plastic, I had a different view of the rivets in the center of the forward spar. I found a couple that had oval heads and two that were not set straight over the rivet body. I started assembly of the vertical stab pieces but those oval rivets kept nagging at me. I pulled out the MIL spec and sure enough they were too small in the minor axis. I had checked them with the rivet gauge which said the major axis was OK, but with the stab up in the jig I could get a light under the gauge and really see how out of round they were. Decided to set up the jig to hold the stab upside down for good access to the manufactured heads and successfully drilled out four bad rivets. Marked up the primer a bit getting them out, so I masked off the stab and re-primed the area. This was the end of a long day, so I'll set the new rivets in the next session.
