Title: Vertical Stabilizer Finished!
Finished up riveting the VS over the past two sessions. I was eventually able to set all of the perimeter rivets using the squeezer, there were a few hard to reach ones which I switched to the 4" 'no hole' yoke to get the job done. Then there were the 4 rivets adjacent to the middle hinge bracket, I think I drilled out 3 of those 4 rivets trying to get in there. There is little room to work in there for a bucking bar or squeezer for that matter. What I ultimately ended up doing was to use the no hole yoke and just set them very slightly, a little bit at a time. Eventually once the rivet shank compresses, I had enough room to set the rivet properly. Kinda frustrating but there's a lot of that in this journey. With those finished up, that just left the three lower joint rivets and the three middle ones which used pop rivets. All done with the rivets and time to clean and pull the vinyl backing off finally! Just a little touch up paint as well to cover some dings and scratches and a good cleaning with denatured alcohol to get rid of any residual glue or adhesive from the vinyl backing. BTW the denatured alcohol will take off the primer paint, don't ask me how I found this out..... Ugh! Time to find a place to store this part and look forward to the elevators. We leave for AirVenture 22 a week from today so won't be much progress till we get back.


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