29 Apr 2024 - 2 hours
I finished up riveting the left HS skin to the front spar and main rib. Looks pretty good!
I moved on to riveting the nose rib to the right HS skin. This was easier than the left because it was my second time doing it in just a few days, but only barely. It's still a wrestling match to get the rib in there and the skin bent around so that there is good contact between the nose of the rib and the skin. These 12 rivets took over an hour to set mostly due to trying to clamp the skin into shape and the HS skin being otherwise big and unruly. I'm happy with how it turned out!
Once the nose rib was in, I grabbed the front spar and left HS structure to fit the right HS skin onto it. This assembly is getting large and it took some effort and time to get the right front spar in the skin and then clecoed together.
I stopped here for the night. It's all one piece, and soon will be there permanently! Next is to set the three blind rivets connecting the main rib to the front spar to the nose rib. Then it will be setting all the skin to rib and spar rivets. After that's done, we get to set the edge ribs and rear spar rivets, but those are done with the squeezer so it should go quickly and neatly. That will be my first time using the new-to-me old pneumatic squeezer, which I'm pretty excited about!
