DATE: 10-16-2024 TIME: 2:40
The last component of the horizontal stabilizer final assembly is to rivet the rear spar in place. All the rivets, per final assembly, are on page 8-14. As I mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to double check the riveting of all the inspar ribs before riveting the rear spar in place. As it is almost impossible to see many of the rivets already set in the skin without a bore scope of some kind I went down to the local Dollar General store and bought a hand held vanity mirror for $3. You can see in the snapshots that I used a heat gun to bend the handle and this allowed me to visually inspect the setting of the rivets that were not visible in the front spar.
I was able to ascertain that the rivets were consistent and set so I set a few more rivets and then when EJ showed up we moved it to a lowed table for the riveting of the rear spar. The 8 x 4 bench would have probably been OK had I not put 3″ wheels on it. Generally it’s a good height for us, but I am going to remove the wheels and cut 3″ off the legs to move it down a bit.
Riveting the rear spar was straight forward enough and went without a hitch after which we returned to closing up the rudder.
