Well today was a glorious day on the project. I finished* the first major sub-assembly of my plane. The horizontal stabilizer is done. Only had one issue which required I drill out 2 rivets and that was with the elevator brackets getting in the way of the squeezer on some rivets. I just got out the rivet gun and bucking bar for those. Had one rivet not pull tight against the skin and another where I only got half the shank under the ram of the squeezer.

6 rivets drilled out and replaced total for the whole thing. Not bad. I also got the hang of drilling them out. I manually turned the chuck to keep the drill bit right in the center of the rivet until it’s deep enough to just power the drill. I had no enlarged holes and was able to use the same size rivets.

The last 4 (two per side) rivets are large pop rivets which secure the rear spar assembly to the aft middle rib. These were cake

Before:

After:

All done:

Now I can take a break and go get a haircut finally:

On to the Vertical Stabilizer…

*Finished…except for the fiberglass wingtips which I will do all at once later in the project.