Need A Chiropractor

Not a lot of riveting got done today. I finished both sides of the upper bulkhead and longerons uneventfully and then moved on to the the lower rib flanges per plans. Much more time was spent on how to best rivet them vs actually riveting. I have to juggle: working solo, being a pretty big dude, working in tight confines, in awkward positions and not damaging existing structure. All the tough rivets are the 1/8" -4 variety which seem to cause (at least for me) more issues due to the higher gun pressures required to set them. And virtually all of them would be a real pain to remove making it imperative to take my time and get it right the first time. Time is spent on each difficult rivet deciding if the gun, pneumatic or manual squeezer is the best approach, how best to orient the factory head on the rivet and thus the tool orientation and which of my 4 bucking bars to use and how to orient them. Then I have to squeeze myself into the baggage compartment, on my knees, with everything organized at hand. My back, neck and knees can only stand so much of that before I need to uncurl myself for a break. Thinking I had it sorted out I finally started driving a AN426-4 and it got totally dorked up due to the structure vibrating so the factory headed ended up very proud. Epic fail. So now I gotta remove it. Fortunately my new 90 degree angle drill came in handy and I carefully drilled out the head and got the rivet removed OK. Round 2. I went with a bigger bucking bar to dampen vibration and that rivet set fine. Whew. From there I moved on to the others and got them done with no further issues. The learning curve was steep today and I'll apply what I learned on the remaining floor ribs. Then head to a chiropractor for my aching back....