With the skeleton riveting done, it's time to begin riveting the skin to the understructure. This is basically a repeat from the right side elevator so I already knew the gotcha spots from the previous side. First things first I needed to finish dimpling the skin which I hadn't done to this point. One thing I did do differently this time is to go ahead and add the RTV to the ends of the stiffeners now before I riveted one side together. This allowed better access to those tight spaces at the trailing edge. With that done it was time to install the counterweight and its screws before wedging the end ribs underneath the counterweight skin and clecoing the skin to the entire understructure. Gotchas here are the different length rivets for just a couple holes where you have three layers of aluminum being riveted together. Surprisingly or maybe not surprisingly the instructions for the left side, including the technical drawing leave out some rivet call outs that are present on the right side drawing. I'm starting to understand just what Rian Johnson who created the drawings way back in June of 2001 was thinking when he made them. Why duplicate instructions or rivet callouts for opposite side structures if the construction is exactly the same. Less typing on his part I suppose or it's more of let's kick the builder out of the nest mentality and make them figure it out. Either way having the drawing for the right side elevator handy is very helpful.

With the skin and substructure clecoed together just needed to set about 50 rivets in that side of the skin. I will let the RTV dry overnight before starting to close up the other side of the skin. Starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel on the empennage and fortunately it's not a freight train trying to run over me!