Well I spent most of today finishing up the paint booth; you can see pictures on the previous entry. After I cleaned up all of the saw dust I decided to remove and replace a rivet on the VS main spar. At first I thought there was just a blemish on the shop head but on inspection with a magnifying glass I realized the shop head was cracked; sorry I forget to get a picture of this. While I was at it I decided to remove a rivet that was set just fine but had a good sized smile. (See photo) The cracked rivet removal was fine but the smiled one was a bear. I should have just left well enough alone.
It was difficult to get out due to the angle of the ribs to the forward spar. I could not keep the drill as perpendicular as I would have liked. I did finally get it out without too much damage to the hole, a little over sized but not too bad. Then it took two tries to get a new rivet set properly. I learned a nice lesson that I should have already known from reading others sites, if the rivet is set good, don't take it out just because you want it to be perfect. This rivet will not be seen once the vertical stabilizer is on the airplane except for annual inspections. I think this one rivet cost me about 2 hours of build time on the rest of the plane. Please learn from me and don’t do this!
