Today we started the final riveting of the main fuselage. Since I was delayed a week, I went ahead and set most of the longeron rivets called out in the Tip-up instructions using the squeezers. When Paul came over on Saturday, we began at the 704 spar and worked back and forward. We also went back and finished out the rivets in the aft fuse we left open to fit the longerons in place. It had been a long time since either of us riveted so we took it slow in the beginning. In the picture above you can see a couple of clecos left in the longeron. I have a couple of mistakes to repair on the right flange tabs of 710 and 711 so I left those cleco’d until I flip the canoe later.
Here’s the 470 rivets for the 704 spar box and the 705 ribs riveted—mostly perfect. There were a couples of dings caused by the bucking bar slipping of the shop head. No biggie considering the wing will cover this whole area anyway. After 4 hours riveting plus an hour lunch we punched out for the day. I didn’t get as far as I hoped but glad just to get the process started.
