The bulk of the day was spent Alumiprep'ing, Alodining, drying, hanging, and priming the elevator components. There were exactly forty pieces that needed to be prepped. That's the single largest batch of crap I've dealt with so far. Usually it's 6 or 8 pieces here and there, but this took the cake. It took me all afternoon to deal with it. Here are some of the pieces hanging on the jig, just waiting for prep work.
After all was said and done, I primed everything. Here are the stiffeners and spar reinforcement plates. The particle board sheets are there just to minimize overspray a bit -- I usually don't spray inside the garage, let alone toward the center, so this helped.
I also took Tom Emery's advice about an easier way to deal with priming parts. He recommended that instead of hanging them, I make a chicken wire screen. His suggestion involved making a 2x4 frame with chicken wire stretched across. That's definitely ideal, but this makeshift screen (chicken wire about 4" over cardboard) worked perfectly and breaks down into no space afterward. But anyway, this really helps to stabilize the parts while spraying, as opposed to stuff swinging all around in the hanging mode.
While everything dried I used the C-frame to dimple the left elevator skin (don't ask me why I'm doing the left elevator first...the instructions specify the opposite).
To touch on the details of back riveting a bit, since I kind of skipped a real description when doing the rudder, here you go...the rivets get held into place using Scotch magic tape (not transparent, it's too sticky...use the "magic" kind), and the skin gets flipped over. The rivet heads are underneath (thus the tape to hold them in place). You position the row you're riveting so that it's over the steel back riveting plate, and you shoot the shop head with the rivet gun and a special spring-loaded back riveting set. It's trivial.
Here you can see a couple stiffeners already on, and the other lines of rivets sticking through. You can see the steel back riveting plate under the row I just riveted.
Voila. Left elevator stiffeners are done. I had one booger rivet that I overdrove, so I marked it with red pen and waited until I was done. I then drilled it out and shot a new rivet in its place. Good enough. After that, I took this sucker in the house and let Jen have at it. She's way better at removing the rivet tape than I am. Thing is, the rivets have tiny dimples in the center of the flush head...when you peel the tape off, it invariably splits right at that dimple. Jen has the technique down where she gives the tape a little wiggle just at it comes to the center of each rivet, and somehow she doesn't split the tape. She's way more talented than I am.
