Success!

The dreaded task of riveting the trailing edge, is done!

Today dad and I got straight to work on the RV once I got home from work. It's been about two and a half days since we applied the pro seal to the trailing edge, so we pulled out all of the clecos. The sealant adhered to them a bit so it took a bit of a tug to get them out, we're thinking we can just soak them in some MEK and work it off with a toothbrush. Once the clecos were out we pulled the angle stock off and cleaned it off, then we check for straightness. There is a slight bow in it, but it's truly almost unnoticeable. We used a #40 drill bit to clean out the holes and got to thinking how we were going to set the rivets.

We used the Mike Bullock Method of setting the rivets on the trailing edge and used the unibit to open each hole in the angle stock to about 1/2". This allowed room for the flush set in our squeezer to fit and then we used the squeezer to set every other rivet half way. This worked perfectly and the results were great. We also alternated the way the rivets went in. In other words, the rivet goes through the skin the opposite way the previous rivet went through. This is purely aesthetic and is only a personal preference. Once every rivet was set about half way we got our $2 block of steel bucking bar and finished setting each rivet by back riveting them. This method worked very nicely and in some areas it's difficult to tell which is actually the manufactured head and which is the shop head. We're very happy with the results!