4 hours over a couple of days to shoot a dozen rivets seems like a lot. What happened was that I was having a heck of a time figuring out how to install the rivet by the red arrow in the first attached picture.

The aft lower edge of the fwd canopy deck skin curves back under at that point and there is only about 1/4" of access to get a bucking bar up in there.

I experimented with all sorts of solutions, bucking bars taped to random pieces of steel etc. I managed to cold work the first rivet that I installed to a point that it got hard before a good shop head formed and I had to drill it out.

I went to VAF and to Vans tech support to see what other people have done here. Several people suggested a cherry max, several more suggested using a cold chisel as a bucking bar, lots of creative solutions.

After sleeping on it, I realized that the root of the whole problem was the aft lower corner of the fwd deck skin encroaching within about 1/4" of the longeron under there. That corner is just hanging in space and not really doing anything. Rathe than trying to cobble together some kind of exotic bucking bar solution I ultimately just took a dremmel with an abrasive wheel and cut that corner to a taper so that it's more parallel with the longeron.

Now I has about 1/2" access under there, which was enough to get a 3/8" thick L shaped bucking bar up in there.

I continued riveting fwd all the way to the instrument panel. I also removed the auto pilot controller and a few other things along the top of the panel to allow better access in there, but I think I'm about done with what I can conveniently rivet solo, so I'll likely move on to something else until I can get a riveting partner to finish this up