Finished riveting everything to the rear spars… almost.

Finished riveting all the stuff to the spars…

I really struggled riveting the aileron hinge brackets to the spar. Couldn’t get the squeezer in there. My rivet set wasn’t long enough to clear the bracket. So I had to use the offset rivet set. But that one is thicker and interfered with the bracket rivets. Mangled a bunch of rivets and drilled them out. Ended up mangling the bracket and bending the doubler drilling out one of them. Thankfully the spar was undamaged.

I drilled out all the rivets and disassembled the brackets and doublers. The hinge is fine. Emailed Van’s to send me a new doubler and angle bracket.

On the other wing I had the brilliant idea to try shooting the rivets for the hinge bracket from the other side of the spar. This worked a lot better.

Should have replacement parts by next weekend when I get back from Florida.