11/8/2003
4 hours: Big day today, we finally riveted some skins, and the VS is within a stone's throw of completion. It took me a while to get up the nerve to try this, and to figure out the best bucking bars and technique. So far I've had to use "improvised" or otherwise modified bucking bars on just about every rivet. Shown here is a 2-pound bucking bar which I polished on the face so that it would fit in the spar channel. In the orientation shown it's really easy to just let it sit on the spar (with protective tape of course) to keep everything aligned. Once I got the hang of controlling the bar I was able to do most of these rivets by myself, gun in one hand and bar in the other.
The first few rivets got a little tilted in their holes due to a different bucking bar that wasn't really flat (it came that way from Avery). After I solved that problem with a bench grinder, the rest of them came out perfectly smooth. We used shipping tape on the rivet set to reduce marring of the skin, which worked very well. Hockey shin tape, which is a big help on universal rivets, did *not* work well here, it left the rivet heads sitting too high. I will probably drill out 3 or 4 of these "learning experience" rivets even though they are structurally sound.
Looking good!
I also deburred all the holes in the rudder skins and stiffeners.