17 Sep 2025 - 2 hours
Today was the day! I had nothing left to do on the tanks but dive in to the tank sealant and start riveting this pile of parts together.The first thing is to clean everything to get all the dirt and oils off the parts to make sure the sealant has the best chance of bonding. I used lacquer thinner as my solvent of choice. Then I taped in the rivets in preparation for back riveting.
Then I mixed some sealant and buttered up the stiffeners, placing each on its rivets. Back-riveting went quickly with the most time consuming part being making sure that the back-riveting plate was underneath the rivets I was about to drive. After the rivets were all set, I cut off a small bit of aluminum tubing to apply sealant to the end of each rivet. I simply twirled the end of the tube in the sealant to pick up some and then spun it around the shop heads to seal them.
As always, it took longer than expected so I only got through the left tank stiffeners tonight.