I’ve been slowly getting back in the shop lately and my first task was to fix the vertical stabilizer. Somewhere along the way, the leading edge was damaged in storage. It was a minor dent and really wasn’t anything to worry about, but since I was going down to the Portland area anyway I decided to just order a new skin and make a quick stop by Vans to pick it up.
Then came the fun part… drilling out the 100-ish rivets to remove the skin. I just used a sharp drill and took my time and for the most part things went well. I made a couple of the holes ovals along the way, but a quick call to Vans confirmed that for just a few here and there it’s totally fine to drill for the next larger rivet size and use an upsized rivet or “oops” rivet. Still working on finishing up the skin (again), but it’s nice to be making some progress.