Finished riveting right mid nose rib. Riveted left HS nose ribs. Replaced faulty rivets on forward spar. Assembled both HS with clecos. Pop-riveted internal main ribs to forward spar. Riveted left skin to spars and ribs. checked rivets and replaced faulty ones.
Things went no better with the right mid-span nose rib - some scratches to the internal primer but looks okay from the outside. The scratches are not deep and really only amount to the removal of the primer. I don't see any need to obsess about them. I just applied a little primer with an artists brush and moved on.
Now that it is time for the forward spar, I made an extra set of cradles so that I can support both HS at the same time, with the forward spar (and eventually the aft spar) running between them. I felt this was much better than doing one HS with the spars hanging out in mid air and needing to be supported to avoid unnecessary stresses being into the structure.
Before the forward spar went in, I riveted the "intermediate" main ribs to the aft side of it. These are the ribs that have no nose rib sharing the same rivets. Mine were numbered 1 to 10 from left to right (looking forward) and the ribs involved were numbers 2, 4, 7 and 9. The air squeezer (I'm getting tired of typing "pneumatic") earns its keep here
Next step was to pop-rivet the main rib that goes behind the mid-span nose rib. This gets pop-riveted to the forward spar and the aforementioned nose rib. This required me to angle the main rib to one side (with clecos through two of the three holes) so that I could get the pop rivet puller into position.
My wife Dorothy helped me with shooting the skin rivets on the forward spar and main ribs. She smiled when I asked her for her help as she knew I was reluctant. "Did you think I would say no?" she replied. Dorothy is meticulous in everything she does and I couldn't hope for anyone better as a riveting partner. For someone that is not too thrilled about aviation in general and this project in particular, she did the job like a trooper and we got a very good result.
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