Since I need a riveting partner to begin riveting on the horizontal stabilizer skin, I went ahead and started on the vertical stabilizer.  Here is the structure clecoed together.

And here it is will all holes drilled out to final size.  I didn’t get a picture of it, but I also clecoed on the skin and drilled all skin holes out to final size.  I then disassembled and began deburring all of the components.  I didn’t even make it completely through VS-808PP (rear spar doubler, shown below with all the lightening holes).  Just like the horizontal stabilizer rear spar doublers, I really want to get this part as close to perfect as possible since it carries a significant percentage of the load of the vertical stabilizer.

My buddies Dan and Andre stopped by today to help me begin riveting the skin on the horizontal stabilizer.  Here, we’ve just finished riveting HS-707 (middle nose rib) to the top of the skin and are clecoing on HS-708 (middle main rib) and HS-706 (tip rib) in preparation for riveting the bottom of HS-707.  We managed to get all solid rivets in the nose rib, though It took all three of us to get the front most rivet into place since the rib wanted to pull away from the skin slightly.

We went ahead and clecoed the entire horizontal stabilizer together and put rivets along one side of the front spar in preparation for my first tech counselor visit tomorrow.  Hopefully, I’ll get the thumbs up and can finish riveting this together sometime this week.

My tech counselor, Dan Checkoway, stopped by this morning to check out my progress.  He said everything looks excellent.  Now that I was good to go, my buddy Andre stopped by again to help me finish the riveting.  Here, we’re putting the last rivet in one side of the front spar.

To save time, I borrowed Andre’s squeezer and was able to squeeze two rivets at a time.  This really sped things up.  🙂

We only had to drill out a few rivets where the squeezer slipped, but I was able to drill them out without enlarging the hole, so we could just drop another rivet in.

Here, I’m squeezing the very last rivet in the horizontal stabilizer.

In about one 4 hour session, we were able to finish the horizontal stabilizer.  It looks so cool to finally see this finished.

I worked a little bit yesterday getting the vertical stabilizer structure smoothed out in preparation for priming.

I also got the horizontal stabilizer tied up to the rafters so that it’s out of the way.

I need to finish a couple of things on the kitchen remodel, so I won’t be able to make too much progress on the RV for a few days.

I dimpled and countersunk all of the ribs and spars for the vertical stabilizer tonight and got everything primed.  Unfortunately, the digital scale I bought for mixing the primer and other chemicals came with a really crappy 9-volt battery that basically only worked for about 30 minutes when I mixed the primer for the horizontal stabilizer.  Tonight, after midnight and right in the middle of mixing the primer, the battery died and I couldn’t find another 9-volt battery anywhere in the house.  Fortunately, we live fairly close to a 7-Eleven, so I was able to run out and get a new battery before the epoxy primer started to cure and finish the priming.

I’m really liking the Stewart System EkoPoxy primer.  It’s trivial to clean up and I’m very impressed with the durability on the horizontal stabilizer structure.  It’s very hard to scratch, and it’s impervious to basically all chemicals.  I really like the fact that it isn’t highly toxic like other epoxy primers, so a simple particle respirator is all you need to spray it.

My buddy Andre was going to stop by later today to help me shoot the skin rivets on the vertical stabilizer, so I got started today riveting the rear spar together.

The lower part of the rear spar uses flush rivets because this section mounts against the rear fuselage bulkhead.  The areas near the left and right sides of the picture which don’t have holes drilled yet will get holes drilled in conjunction with that bulkhead and will be bolted together.

The interior structure has been riveted together here.  Getting those rivets that hold the lower nose and main ribs to the front spar were a real bitch.  I had to use a double offset rivet set to reach them (I suppose I could have bent both ribs out of the way and squeezed them, but I would have had to bend them a lot).

Andre and I shot and bucked the vertical stabilizer rivets that can’t be reached with a squeezer.