2.2 hours, 164 rivets
Riveted spar to the upper skin. Was able to set a few with the squeezer and the 4" no-hole yoke, and bucked the rest using the traditional built up blind bucking bar. Went reasonably well, but there are a few divots where I applied pressure to the mushroom set at the wrong angle. And those will be on the top for everyone to see. Dang.
Back riveted the lower skin stiffeners. These were a bit of a challenge since the skin is harder to open enough with the spar in the way. And the skin seems to want to buckle a bit more, and you have to be very sure that everything is solid up against the back rivet plate. Learned this the hard way on the last stiffener. It wasn't all the way down for two of the rivets, and they were not completely set on the skin side. Drilled them out and riveted again. Only mildly painful, but I hate not getting them right the first time.
Friday
1.2 hours, 108 rivets
Back riveted upper stiffeners. This was easy compared to the bottom stiffeners (which come later)
After reading current posts on the VAF forum, I chose to rivet the counterbalance assembly to the spar before installing the spar in the skin. Based on the work I did the next day, I think this is a good deviation from the instructions.
