Section 8 - Horizontal Stabilizer (riveting skins to front/rear spars, ribs, & stringers)

A few days have passed, but on-and-off during that time I made 4 cradles to hold the horizontal stabilizer, using plywood scavenged from the top of the empennage crate as well a few feet of 1" angle aluminum I bought from Van's last month "just in case I needed it."  Then I riveted the remaining 3 nose ribs per side. The two inner nose ribs per side, which required bucking at the very forward of the skins, required quite a long monkey-arm to reach, as well as riveting in spurts by Braille (and visually checking, of course). Then, I found that the opposite side required learning how to rivet left-handed (i.e., gun in left, bucking bar in right). Surprisingly, not a lot of swearing, since I anticipated those ribs would be pains in the butt. Part of the reason I could rivet them at all is because of the tungsten bucking bar I got from Cleaveland Tool, which has a very high density; it's shit-ton expensive, but WELL worth the price paid. All surfaces can be used to buck rivets, which helps get it into some tight spots.

The most gratifying part of this section of the build was dropping the skeleton (front spar assembly, ribs, stringers) into the skins and clecoing the whole mess together, because NOW it looks very close to the final product:

Section 8 - Horizontal Stabilizer (countersinking/dimpling; substructure)

Lots of progress the last couple of days - these myriad parts are starting to look like a horizontal stabilizer ... well, the skeleton anyway.  Much of the work has been deburring edges and holes ... a thankless but necessary task that took a half dozen hours.  Not shown, dimpling the ribs and skins, a task I very much enjoy (using the DRDT-2 is therapeutic). Below are a few pics from this midpoint stage in assembling the H.S.

Countersinking a couple hundred holes on each side of the front and rear spars, and stringers (rear spare shown here). Aluminum shavings/filings everywhere!

Section 8 - Horizontal Stabilizer (initial work, front and rear spars)

Starting with the Horizontal Stabilizer, I am priming ONLY non-alclad parts, since the pure aluminum coating on the alclad parts acts to prevent corrosion.  I estimate that this will save about 10lbs in weight overall, as compared with priming all non-skin internal parts, which was my original modus operandi.

Rear spar with 4 of 5 brackets clecoed (this is the only pic I currently have of the rear-spar - it is currently riveted and sitting awaiting assembly with the ribs, stringers, etc.):