Well now that I have fixed my previous error and drilled out the ribless rivets, the rest of the ribs went fairly smooth. The back riveting produces a nice factory head with the skin and this operation goes pretty quick…way faster than squeezing rivets and a lot more fun. It didn’t take long to were I had the timing down to set it perfect each time. The more challenging part came when I had to set the rivets for the bottom. The horn gets in the way a little, but I managed to figure that out with the squeezer position. The two aft rivets were really tough. There is not enough room to get the squeezer in to set these rivets. For the second one in I managed to get it mostly set with a piece of thin steel (old file) resting on top of the shop end of the rivet, the factory head/skin resting on the back plate and then using the rivet gun to hammer on the file as close to the rib as possible. It’s not very efficient, but it worked…mostly. I made several attempts with the aft most rivet, but nothing worked. I think I will end up using a pull rivet here.
