We got off to kind of a slow start back-riveting the top skins, starting with the right side this time. Initially, I thought it would be a good idea to insert a bunch of rivets at and hold them in place with rivet tape, similar to how we've back-riveted other parts... but then by an hour or so into this I realized it would be much easier to just cover the bucking bar with packaging tape and insert rivets one at a time as we went (by the way- this is the method Van's calls out in the plans, I was just being ridiculous and trying a different method). Anyway after an hour or so we hadn't made a ton of progress and we were both bored. This is going to take a while to get all 1000 or so rivets done on both wings. We had gotten this far though:
Day 1 of riveting the R top skins
It's a good start, but we have a LONG way still to go!
So with that, we decided to move on to the next part just for a change of pace. Skipped ahead to Section 17 and started the prep work on the L Leading edge:
The L leading edge clecoed together
Some of the ribs had to be notched out to sizes called out in the plans for clearance from the main spar.
It's a pretty basic part actually, consisting of 7 ribs, one J-channel, a splice strip and the skin. I wanted to get a jump start on it though because there are a few modifications required to install the Duckworks landing light kits we got. So, after some final-drilling we called it a night. Lots more riveting to come!
