Five weeks is a long time to go without working on my priority project, but life intervened. In the past month my wife graduated law school, her parents visited for two weeks, I was the best man for a wedding, threw a bachelor party and we moved to Sykesville, Maryland! In all that commotion, the plane sat untouched. The plane is still in the old shop, and I plan to move it to my hangar at DMW as soon as the tanks, leading edges, and top skins are attached.  I do not want to have to re-fabricate my wing stand at the hangar.

First up on today’s docket was to clean up the shop and reacquaint myself with my current tasks.  Shop clean up took quite awhile as I had left the shop in a messy state.

Here is a photo of the new baffle I received from Van’s.  I will need to remove a good amount of the old pro-seal and reinstall.  The rivet problem is still an issue with the other tank but I’ll need the laptop to use the “borescope” USB camera I have.

Mike Bullock lent me his straight rivet set for the leading edges.  This works well for a solo job, but as you will see below, I’m not happy with my results.I used some duct tape to protect the ribs during riveting. 

The following photos of the rivets that connect the leading edge ribs to the spar run outward to the wing tips.  (Right to left in the photo below)

There are multiple smiley face rivets I’m not entirely happy with.  I have marked most with arrows. Most, I do not believe need to be drilled out, but there are a few that might need to be.  The lack of clearance between the rivet heads and the rib was very challenging.  I’m not sure what else I could do to solve the problem. Here is the worst one.  This one smacked the spar pretty good.  Pretty ugly.

After completing all of the remaining riveting on the right leading edge, I set about working on the stall warning installation on the left wing’s leading edge.  First, I riveted the access doubler in place. 

Then I installed the bushing in the spar’s tooling hole by enlarging with a step bit. 

Finally, I began putting together the actual pieces that make up the stall warning unit. A number of countersinks later…The last thing I did for the day was prime the stall warning parts. The green epoxy primer I have dries really quickly.  Unfortunately, the cheap grey self-etching primer does not.  By doing it last, it will have at least a week to dry before I’m at the shop again.

All in all its been a rough couple of months for the project.  The fuel tank mistake was my worst mistake yet and has cost me a lot of time to fix. And its not even fixed yet!  Then the lack of time has further hampered my progress.  Regardless, its good to be back to the shop and hopefully I can get all these tasks cleaned up and the kit down to Westminster.