3/12/21 – 3.9 hours
3/13/21 – 0.3 hours
Back-riveting the internal elevator structure continued with attaching the ribs/stiffeners to the bottom left and top right skins. It helped me to reference the skins I had already completed to ensure I had the ribs in the right order (L1 – L5, and R1 – R6) and had the flanges oriented correctly. The process went smoothly and the final results were great.

The trim access doubler and reinforcement brace are also attached at this stage of the build. The instructions call out two rivets in the doubler that must be set first, because you won't have access to those areas when the brace is attached. I used the pneumatic squeezer with the small 1 1/2" yoke to squeeze the rivets around the access hole. Back-riveting would also work in this area, with the exception of the holes for the final two nutplates. Those have to be squeezed or bucked because the outer skin does not include that area. I switched to back-riveting for the approx. 14 holes outside the reinforcement doubler brace. I saved the nutplate holes for last, and used a small diameter flat set in the pneumatic squeezer for those.

The final step was to cleco the left and right elevator sections together. The plans clearly show how to arrange the ribs when the top and bottom skins come together. Once the skins and ribs are aligned, the ribs get cleco'd to hold the top and bottom halves together. The area between the skins is extremely small, and I could not get my hand in there with the cleco pliers to connect the ribs near the rear spar. I read in a later step that you could extend the handles of the rivet puller with PVC pipe for the tight areas, and I applied that technique to the cleco pliers. The extended handles worked great to easily insert the clecos in the confined area.
[3x Rivet Gun, Back-Rivet Set, Back-Rivet Plate, Pneumatic Squeezer, Small Diameter Flat Sets, Short PVC Pipe (2x) for Cleco Pliers]