With the front spar rivets done, squeezing the rear spar rivets was a piece of cake – mostly. I neglected Vans’ instructions to put the rivets’ manufactured heads on some of the thinner rib flanges, and wound up with some distortion of a few flanges. I called Van’s to confirm that this wasn’t a serious error, and they agreed that it was better to leave those rivets in place than to risk damaging the rear spar by removing them.

That only happened on a few ribs; the rest came out fine and I’m glad to be done with this. Here’s the finished left wing box.

Left wing box

One last thing…some extra attention to the plans is appropriate here, especially to the drawing that shows which rear spar rivet holes should be left open for future work. Take some tape and cover up those holes – you’ll save yourself some heartache by not having to remove rivets from them.