I asked my wife to help rivet the Turtle Deck. This was her first adventure for helping with riveting on the airplane. We riveted most of the deck by “Back Riveting” with my wife managing the bucking bar on the outside of the skin. At first, I tried to manipulate the rivet gun by kneeling inside the baggage compartment and reaching to the back of the Turtle Deck Compartment. I’m vertically challenged with short arms and I started screwing up rivets (which I had to re-drill and reset). So, I reluctantly climbed inside the Turtle Deck area and laid on a bunch of pads (adjacent to the push-pull rod and on top of my spare battery assemblies) and operated the rivet gun or bucking bar from there. After 10 hours of not having fun we finally got the Turtle Deck riveted. My wife did a really good job but disliked every minute of riveting. We managed to get a couple dents in the skin which I will cover with aluminum-bondo, before I paint. Overall, it turned out well and I appreciated my wife’s help…it probably would be best if I didn’t ask her to help with riveting again, though.
