This morning I riveted the rest of the skeleton together and clecoed on the skins. HS-404 (inboard front ribs) and the rear spar (HS-702)were the only skeleton parts left off. I'll explain shortly. Here's the assembly awaiting skin rivets.
Here's where I deviated from the riveting instructions in Van's plans. It seemed kinda weird to me the way they had you doing it. And it called for blind rivets where you could easily get by with solid rivets. And I just like and trust solid rivets more than blind ones. Especially the 1/8" size ones. The blind rivets just seem wimpy to me. I guess my way is slightly more difficult, but it's not bad. Basically Van's had you riveting the middle-front rib (HS-70?) to the top of the skin before riveting it to the skeleton. Then you were supposed to cleco it on the skeleton, put blind rivets in the three mid-front rib to front spar to mid-rear rib holes. And then putting more blind rivets on the bottom side of the skin (yuck!) in the mid-front rib. So here's the more solid (hehe) way of doing it. Prior to putting the skin on, rivet the whole skeleton together, except the rear spar (HS-702) and inboard front ribs (HS-404). Here you can see my middle ribs with solid rivets in place.
Here's the two clecoes per side plugging the holes that the inboard front rib attach to.
And here you can see the top side of the skin with all the skin rivets driven. Notice the inboard front ribs missing. You have to leave those out because the solid rivets in the mid-front rib get bucked by sticking your arm way in that front section. It was a long reach, but really it wasn't difficult. Unless you've got unusually short arms :) So after getting both the top and bottom rivets set for both those mid-front ribs, you can slide the inboard front ribs in (just like you do when you're first drilling them). Cleco them on and set all the rivets in them. No problemo! Also note the three clecos still in there, no rivets there, as that's where the empennage fairing will go some time (long) in the future (there's also two in each inboard front rib). I put big red circles around the holes so I didn't do something stupid when I was in my riveting mindset.
As I said, after finishing all the rivets (on the left side), I put those ribs in and buttoned it up...
One long day, one big piece of airplane finished!
