After priming I can start today with assembling and riveting. My dad still had an armor steel plate from the army (he retired decades ago). It’s 8mm thick and I can use MDF to embed it so I get a nice back-rivet table.
The back-rivet results are prefect. Which makes it painfully obvious that riveting with the bucking bar is much harder. Well at least I can practice drilling out rivets.
The biggest mistake I made was thinking that I was proficient enough in dimpling with the squeezer, so I could speed things up. I missed the hole and pushed the lever next to it. If there are any doubts in how hard a squeezer can squeeze. Well, it punches right through the flanges of the ribs. Maybe I can cut time by not drilling, but just punch and dimple in one swoop.
Really glad this is the training project and NOT my actual Empennage rib.
Video
