HS spar riveting and skin prep (kinda)

Today I spent some time to rivet the HS spar assembly together, happily marked HS-ASS-001-C-F-0 sheet 5 complete.

Corner rivets

Several rivets were very close to the edge of the spar, and my Milwaukee rivet gun was unable to reach the rivet without damaging the spar. This corner rivet tool was super helpful. It turns the rivet stem by a few degrees, opening a just big enough gap for the gun to reach. I used this tool on a few 3.2 mm rivets.

A few 4mm rivets was also close to edge, but the corner tool was only designed to fit 3.2 mm rivets, so I couldn’t use it on the 4mm rivets. I might consider drilling the hole larger next time. For today’s work, I just switched to a hand riveter and finished those corner rivets.

Oh and my wife Ye officially pulled her first rivet on ‘HS-RIB-004-X-F-0’ on the rigth side and left her autograph!

After all the riveting, I measured alignment using laser edge again. They still align which is good.

Skin prep

To be honest I was dreading to prepare the HS skin. The protective plastic was just so awful to peel off. I spent maybe half an hour to one hour this afternoon to pull off he plastic on one sheet of skin. My fingers went numb after I was done with just one side. And I haven’t even cleaned it yet. I will do that tomorrow maybe. Peeling off the plastic is now officially my least favorite thing.