21 Feb 2026 - 2 hours
More visible progress today as the leading edges went together for the final time! The instructions say to squeeze the aft-most rivets of each rib first, then work your way forward, so I did just that and squeezed the aft two rivets on each rib, both top and bottom, of both leading edges. Then I filled the stall-warner (which I am not installing) holes with rivets. I probably should have made a backer/washer type thing so that the rivets were going through two pieces of metal rather than just the skin only, but they look good enough to never be noticed by anyone but me.I didn't have enough time to finish anything completely, but I did get through about 75% of the rivets on the top side of the right leading edge. I was riveting in this configuration in the picture, and the bottom four rivets were angled down enough that they would fall out, so I just did all that I could in this position so that I had muscle memory going in my favor. I'll adjust the position to get the rest.
These rivets are pretty easy to set and they came out really nicely! I'm excited to get these done and the leading edges on the spars!