(page 6-05) Taking a break.......                             

...Then some actual progress.  The Spousal Unit forced me, kicking and screaming, to spend a week in the Keys, which severely cut into my progress on the -12   Actually, the kicking and screaming happened when she made me return to the frozen North (Carolina).

I did, however, get to visit the southern-most EAA chapter in the US, chapter 1241 in Marathon, Florida, which is about half way between Key Largo and Key West.  Amazingly, they average about 200 people at each meeting, putting to shame the chapters I've been affiliated with.

For the first time, I used Isham's pneumatic rivet puller, which came with the Isham's RV-12 tool kit. This tool worked better than I could have hoped for. I riveted the spar caps to the rear vertical stab spar, which involved a few squeezed rivets and probably 100 pulled rivets. Piece if cake. About half the rivets required the use of the little wedges, which were made early on, for riveting in tight spaces. They worked as advertised.

I finally came to the realization that deburring all the edges and holes will consume a substantial amount of time.  As previously mentioned, there are approximately 12,500 rivets, but each rivet goes through at least two holes, sometimes three.  That's a lot of holes.

After reading way too many builder blogs, I finally settled on a procedure for preping the aluminum for priming:  For every surface which gets riveted to a mating surface, I'm scuffing with red ScotchBrite, wiping down with acetone, then spraying with rattle can self-etching primer.  I think this is sufficient.

Finally, a part has emerged which, with a bit of imagination, looks like an airplane part: the vertical stab skeleton.  The skin may get attached tomorrow.