Horizontal Stabilizer Finished!

Oh man, this was a TON of riveting. My previous sections didn’t have this many rivets, but it was very rewarding! After I got caught up and then some on Friday after work, I really dug in all day Saturday and a little bit on Sunday. This was all riveting the entire time, starting from the front spar, to the stringers, to the skin outwards and then finally to the rear spar. It was really fun and there were a few things I learned along the way.

The main issue I encountered was when I was going to rivet the LP4-3 blind rivets for the rear spar to the mid ribs. The middle rivet was fine, but the outside ones were too close to the flange for me to get a straight shot with the rivet guns I had. I decided to keep moving and deal with it later. When I opened the drawer to get another tool, I saw the dies for the blind dimpling tool. I realized that if I stacked then together, I could then create enough space to get my riveting gun in there!

I was super exhausted after working on this so much on Friday and Saturday. I spent a total of 15 hours and 15 minutes on it this weekend to wrap it up. I’m super excited that I’ve continued to hone my skills with this portion of the build and I’m ready to get on to the elevators! During my breaks tomorrow with work I’m going to go into the attic to gather all of the parts and bring them down to the garage.