Spread across 5 sessions, some with Steve's help and some without, I got the Left Wing covered with fabric up to step 10, being the bottom side. Early on I realized I had been shorted in Stits fabric by PA... short by about 10 feet! That coupled with being short on Poly-Tak a few weeks earlier makes me think that PA is making a major mistake: to save a few dollars they are losing big in kit builder appreciation. Hopefully some of the new people they have brought on staff since I purchased my kit will make things better. In some of the photos below you can see two of my new 'favourite' tools. The little soldering iron is really nifty for burning the rivet holes through the tape and fabric. The manual riveter (Stanley MR100CG) is much better for the small aluminum ABL4-2A rivets used for securing the fabric than my pneumatic rivet gun. The latter tends to gum up in the jaws after a few of these rivets requiring it to be torn down, unjammed, cleaned and oiled and in general being a pain in the ass. The manual riveter can't pull the bigger steel rivets but works real fine for these small aluminum ones. You have to be careful though to pull up, not push down on it, or you risk driving the thing right through the fabric when it snaps the rivet. Plus the pneumatic riveter requires a noisy compressor which drowns out the tunes wafting through the hangar.
