7 hours.
Yesterday, my friend Derek came by for a few hours and helped me rivet the bottom wing skins on. Derek is peripherally responsible for me being where I am today with regard to aviation: Flying leads to skydiving, skydiving leads back to flying and flying lessons, rental airplanes lead to homebuilts. Before he arrived, I did some pondering about the best way to rivet the wing skins on, and the first two things that needed to happen were the removal of the aileron push tubes and the flaps, so I did that.
Riveting the skins on the wings would have been really tough without help, especially the inboard rows near the bellcrank. As it was, I really had to stretch to get the bucking bar up in there far enough to reach the rivets closest to the aft wing spar. But it gets easier as you move outboard, and we finished off the left wing yesterday afternoon. Derek had to leave at around 3-ish: newborns really don’t care all that much about Daddy’s friends’ projects, but I kept going.
Before he left, Derek helped me get the double row of rivets on the right wing, then I got going on the rest. To say that riveting those big bastards by yourself is awkward would be like saying Stephen King sells a lot of books. Fortunately, the skins do bend quite a bit, and I wish I had a photo to show you how I did it, but the general gist of it this:
With the double row riveted, cleco the spar side and leading edge side holes together. Then climb in between the skin and the ribs, which will allow you to get a hand and a bucking bar in through the lightening holes to just about anywhere you need to go. And it should go without saying, remove the blue stuff from the inside of the skin before it gets riveted on, or you’re going to have a lot of fun later. Good thing I remembered this before we got too far along, but if you’re reading this, I hope it reminds you before you buy yourself a long night of failure-drinking.
I thought the autopilot servo was going to cause a lot of problems, but with the push tubes out of the way, it was really a non-issue. By myself, I got another row done, up to the access panel for the bellcrank, then quit for the day. I was sore and tired. Even with help, riveting wing skins on is like yoga for gearheads.
Left to do: the remaining skin rivets, and some minor wiring cleanup, since I replaced the puny 14-ga wire intended for the landing lights with a much beefier 10-ga flavor.