Today was another great milestone day. Finished the Vertical Stabilizer. The Vertical Stabilizer was much easier than the Horizontal Stabilizer. I’m surprised they don’t start you off with this one. Nothing needed to be fabricated. All the holes were pre-drilled and just needed to be final drilled to the proper size.

Riveting was much like the HS, except there is no middle nose rib which made it a bit easier. You start by riveting the front spar on and then the middle rib. All with a rivet gun.

(All the “hard” rivets done):

Supposedly the rest can be squeezed though I ran into some problems on any of the rivets that were adjacent to the reinforcement plate on the rear spar or the hinge brackets (see the white powder coated brackets on the back). I think I needed a thin-nosed yoke for my squeezer. The rivets on the spar interfered with the nose of the yoke on my squeezer.  I ended up bucking these with a gun.

The last 3 rivets are blind rivets on the middle rib-to-rear spar junction:

All done. Up next is the Rudder but, I will be waiting til after Christmas to get started.