A Riveting story

Ok, so its been a couple days since I posted mainly because not much has happened with the airplane.  The last day or two I have been working on a practice kit that a fellow RV-9A builder gave me (thanks Mike!) so that I could get a little rivet practice before I tried to set my first rivet when it counts.  I will say that the bucking bar is going to be my nemesis   I could do nice rivets with the squeezer of course, and doing a back rivet was easy, but when it came to the bucking bar I didn't do so good.  I did quite a few and by the time I was done I was doing acceptable rivets but nothing I would sign my name to.

That said, tonight I finally went back to the plane and started putting things together with rivets.  Yes, I set my first rivet tonight!  And it looked pretty good!  Ok, so I used the pneumatic squeezer but it still is very exciting to finally be putting things together.  Here are the results.

There it is, my first rivet!

and here is the top

Here is the job almost completed.