Horizontal stabilizer - in the home stretch

I drilled out the hard-to-reach holes in the gusset and hinge bracket with my new, long bit, then widened them from the other, more accessible side.

I finished putting together and riveting the entire skeleton, and had my first mistake that required me to remove some rivets. I forgot to add the doublers before attaching the bracket, so I drilled out and removed the top and bottom rows of rivets, added the brackets, then reassembled everything.

The center hinge bracket needs to be attached with 2 bolts, in addition to the rivets. This seems a little too important to guesstimate the torque, so I ordered a torque wrench to get it right.

In the meantime I riveted one side of the horizontal stabilizer skin onto the skeleton. The other side will remain detached so there’s easy access to fasten the bolts once my torque wrench arrives.

Being blocked on this, I moved it off the workbench (thankfully Cara doesn’t mind it temporarily living on our bedroom floor) and began working on the elevator.