The vertical stabilizer is finished! (for now) There were a couple of final challenges to complete this section of the build. First, I had to figure out how to rivet the front two holes in the skin to the tip rib. The combination of the angle and the tight space made it impossible to get my pneumatic squeezer in cleanly, and I did not have a bucking bar that would fit that space either. I tried to make a “thin” bucking bar out of a 1/8” x 3/4" x 48” strip of steel. That solution had potential, but did not lead to clean rivets on my practice piece. I then used the steel strip to replace the 1/4” flat set in the squeezer, and the additional 1/8” clearance was just enough to get the squeezer in to set the rivet.
I set the skin to rear spar rivets with the squeezer, and then turned my attention to the final rivets for the rear spar and ribs. The squeezer did a nice job on the two rivets on the tip rib, but I got sloppy with one of the rivets and had to drill it out and replace it. The universal head rivet is harder to drill out cleanly, but I manage to get it out without damaging or enlarging hole (whew!).
I could not find a good angle with the pneumatic squeezer c-yoke or longeron-yoke on the bottom rib to spar rivets, so I went to the rivet gun and tungsten bucking bar. The rivet gun worked great on those rivets! The final 3 rivets were blind rivets (pop-rivets) through the rear spar to the center rib. These were the first blind rivets on the project, and they seemed to get set without any issues.
Time to find a place to safely store the vertical stabilizer, and on to the rudder!