Last entry left off with getting the VS skin prepped for primer. With that done, paint went on (out of practice for painting, not my best work!). Studied instructions/plans and realized that what I had thought earlier was going to be no big deal, turned out to be a mistake on riveting of the VS ribs/spar and had to be fixed before I could continue.

A year ago I would have freaked out over how to fix this. Things come a little more naturally now and it's more of a "how much time is this going to cost me sort of thing" nowadays. Only problem was I needed to drill out two rivets that I had already set, one of them was the one that I cracked in half the first time I riveted them, so this would be the second time I've had to drill out the rivet in this hole location. Had to be really careful not to elongate the hole. Fortunately with a good bit of patience and having experience under my belt, I was able to gently drill and pop the heads off the rivets and then remove the shanks without enlarging the holes at all. So that was a win in my book. BTW, don't do what I did, I prematurely riveted the top rib VS706 to the rear spar. Got a little exited to do a few simple rivets with the squeezer after riveting parts of the rest of the frame. Didn't read far enough ahead in the plans, doh!

With that rib separated once again from the rear spar I could insert the frame into the skin. I went ahead before I even drilled out the rivets and test fit all the pieces anyways, I like to know if I have a fitment issue before I get too far along. Everything lined up well so I proceeded with the rivet fix and then was left with the proper parts to insert inside the skin for riveting.

Manual says to start the 3-3.5 rivets at the middle rib/front spar intersection and work outwards from there so that's what I did. Memories of riveting the horizontal stab came flooding back! The -3 rivets are so small, very easy to overdrive them. Low air pressure on the gun is important, I run about 35 PSI for these size rivets and the gun allows me to feather the action to get it started which helps a lot. So after a couple hours, all the interior skin rivets had been set with none needing to be removed and replaced so that was nice.

This was a good place to leave off for the evening, time for our EAA Chapter meeting this night and off to AirVenture next week. Just need to squeeze perimeter rivets with a squeezer during the next work session.