3/8/2021 – 2.1 hours The elevators start to come together at this point by riveting the top left and bottom right skins to the left and right rear spars and E-1008B ribs. It is also where the forward half of the trim tab hinge is riveted to the left rear elevator spar. This step also highlighted a previous omission (either in the plans or a step I missed). The left skins have close-out tabs that sit just outboard of the shear clip at the outboard edge of the trim tab space. The shear clip was dimpled flush on the trim tab side, but the two close-out tabs were not dimpled. I did not see an instruction in the plans to dimple the close-out tabs, but they should be dimpled to nest with the shear clip and receive the flush head blind rivets that will eventually hold the shear clip and close-out tabs together. I dimpled the three holes in the top and bottom close-out tabs, and then continued with clecoing the top left elevator skin to the left rear spar and ribs. I secured the assembly to the work bench with spring clamps, and used a piece of angle iron and a metal yardstick to provide a shim for the ribs where they contact the workbench. I set the rivets in the location of the trim tab first since I could easily reach those with the pneumatic squeezer. I started in the center and worked out alternately setting ever other rivet heading inboard and outboard. I then removed the remaining clecos and worked similarly from the center out. The most inboard 3 holes don't get riveted at this point in order to provide access to the gusset in a later step. [Spring Clamps, Pneumatic Squeezer, 1/4" and 1/8” Flat Squeezer Sets] 3/9/2021 – 3.1 hours I finished riveting the left elevator top skin to the rear spar. I used the squeezer to set the rivets in the area of the trim tab cutout, but had to switch to the rivet gun and bucking bar for the remainder of the outboard rivets. I decided to use the special elevator bucking bar for the 14 outboard rivets to get a little experience with it. The biggest issue is the fact that you cannot see or feel the area where the shop head will be formed. For the first five or six rivets, I set each rivet individually, unclamped the part from the work bench, flipped the part over to inspect the rivet, flipped it back and clamped it back to the bench, drove the rivet some more, unclamped, flipped, inspected, … This was clearly a very time-consuming process that took 15 to 20 minutes per rivet. I accelerated the process by drawing a cross-hair on the elevator bucking bar where it should align with the rivet hole, and I put a mark on the top of the bar where it goes beneath the skin. That helped quickly align the bar, which reduced the time to set each rivet. The results with the special bucking bar were very good. [Spring Clamps, 3x Rivet Gun, Swivel Flat Set, Special RV-14 Elevator Bucking Bar] 3/11/2021 – 3.4 hours 3/12/2021 – 0.6 hours Back riveting has been a bit of a struggle recently. I ruined the bottom trim tab skin and trim tab spar, and I had a couple of rivets on the left elevator top skin that didn't set correctly. I took a day off to review my fundamentals before resuming back-riveting the ribs to the top left elevator skin. I reduced the gun pressure from 40 to 35 psi, shimmed up my back rivet plate to level it better with the rest of the table, and adjusted my grip on the rivet set so I could hold the pieces tighter together against the plate while controlling the placement of the rivet set. All those little changes made a world of difference, and I was able to back-rivet all of the ribs to the top left and bottom right elevator skins with really good results. The next task was to repeat the process of attaching the elevator rear spar and ribs on the bottom right elevator skin. One of the big differences is there is no trim tab cutout on the right side, so all of the rivets on the rear spar had to be set using the special RV-14 bucking bar. There are also 9 holes on the spar, 6 at the outboard end and 3 at the inboard end, that do not get riveted at this stage of the build. That left 32 rivets on the middle of the spar to set with the rivet gun and long bucking bar. As before, the main issue is not being able to see or feel the area where the shop head will be formed. I didn't want to repeat the very slow process of aligning the bucking bar, inserting and setting the rivet, unclamping the part from the bench to inspect the rivet, reclamping to finish the rivet, and repeating the process 31 more times. I sped things up by drawing some alignment marks on the bucking bar, and extending the centerline for each of the rivets to the trailing edge of the elevator and making a mark there to match up with the bucking bar alignment marks. With this set up, I could quickly and accurately position the bucking bar. I also decided to wait to inspect the rivets until they were all set. The process went much faster, and the rivets turned out great. [Spring Clamps, 3x Rivet Gun, Back-Rivet Set, Back-Rivet Plate, Swivel Flat Set, Special RV-14 Elevator Bucking Bar]