Right Side Skin Riveted

Fortunately for me, Tom, N811WT - yes the yellow RV-6a that recently had its maiden flight, had some copper clecos he could lend me. As expected the package from Avery didn't arrive yet and as they don't provide tracking number I don't know how far out it is and I was a lame duck without some extra clecos and the tail cone sitting in the shop waiting to get riveted.
So, I started to put those extra clecos in and get the cone ready for action. You can see Tom's clecos as I marked them with masking tape.





After the structure was well supported I put in the right bushing support bracket and match drilled the holes on the J-stiffener side. Again I didn't need the 12" extended drill bit for this but now I could see how someone might have to use it depending on the type and shape of drill they might be using.
Besides the mess this kind of work above a finished structure is creating - metal chips were all over the place - this went fine again and I had no trouble getting it riveted in. BTW, you might want to not use a cleco after drilling the first hole into the bracket as it will sit so close to the next hole to drill you will certainly have a hard time to not interfere with this cleco. This is why they might suggest the extended drill bit. Another way of supporting the bracket is to use a cleco clamp and a piece of wood to raise one clamp above the J-stiffener. This worked much better for me as the force of the clamps is much higher and both brackets had quite some clearance between the J-stiffener and the bracket side I had to drill in. The clamp pulled the bracket side and the J-stiffener close together and this was better than using a cleco. This also made it easier to provide clearance for the drill and therefore making the extended drill bit obsolete.

Inserting the snap bushing was easy and this is how it looked like to a mouse sitting inside the cone - wielding a camera 20 times heavier as itself.



On to the major riveting job it was. With everything prepared and ready to got I started setting the rivets in the open holes on the right side skin realizing that there are a LOT of rivets in the cone and that this might take a while to finish.
I was dead on with this hunch! Two hours after finishing the bracket I pulled the last rivet on the right side skin.





It was just after 9:30 PM at that point and I called it quits for the night.

It looks great though and the structure is already significantly sturdier than with the clecos alone. I'm eager to finish the left side now to see how weight and rigidity will turn out!