My fried Bob Erley came over today with the explicit objective of finishing the riveting on the bottom fuselage so we could flip it over. A planned 2 hours turned into 4 hours but we got it done. But blasts with the rivet gun and I buck. I like to buck because then I can see the shop head and decide on the moment if the rivet needs a second hit or not.
We first riveted the bottom skin onto the stiffeners, firewall flange and mid-bottom skin. Then we rivetted the 1/8 " rivets along the outboard seat rib.
In order to reach some of the flush rivets that fit closely to the bottom skin we used a flat rivet set that I picked up at Arlington's swap meet. And to protect the airplane skin we used a little scrap piece of .025 aluminum inbetween the flush set and the skin. My brother Ed told me about this technique. It worked great. We were able to get them flush with no marks.
