Sat, March 26th - It was a productive day with many hours spent working. We took everything apart and I helped hold the skins for dimpling. Dimpling is pressing little tapers into the rivet holes so that the rivet heads will be flush with the skin of the airplane and not cause increased wind resistance. It also makes the rivet joints stronger. Mark then polished the edges of every piece. No piece can have any rough marks, sharp edges or scratches as those can become stress points for cracks over time. Next came painting everything with an aluminum primer and we left it overnight to dry.
Sun, March 27th - We practiced riveting together with some scrap metal, Mark with the rivet gun and me holding the bucking bar on the back side. We finally took the plunge and began riveting on the horizontal stabilizer (still looks like a tail to me). We were pretty nervous that we would screw it up but it came out looking great. We measured the thickness and diameter of the rivet heads with a gauge and everything was to spec. We were pretty proud of our first rivet job and no longer nervous about bucking rivets!
Enjoy the pics!
