It’s Saturday and after the blizzard it’s 20 degrees outside and we have two feet of snow in the driveway.So do we bundle up and dig out the cars, or do we stay warm and dry and work on the RV? That’s an easy question to answer.

First thing we did was finish riveting two of four of the front floor stiffeners.  I was able to squeeze most of the rivets, but a couple required the classic buck/shoot method – no problems.

After finishing the stiffeners we moved on to fuselage side and belly skin rivets.  Some we were able to back-shoot, for others Ellen ran the rivet gun and I bucked.  We had a few rivets to drill out, but we made good progress.  The tungsten bucking bar is worth every penny I paid for it…made short work of some difficult-to-reach rivets.

I’m especially happy that we got most of the rivets done in the baggage floor where the side skin curves into the belly. Considering how much of a pain it was to get the side skins bent to the proper curve and fitted to the belly skin, this area came out really well.  Once again, Ellen did a wonderful job with the rivet gun!

Another picture?  Sure, why not…

We probably can’t avoid shoveling snow tomorrow morning, but after we do we’ll be back at work on the fuse right side.  We’re getting really close to flipping the fuse “canoe.”