I set my first solid rivets today and yes, I did use the Sonex recommended “bolt and hammer method”. I had asked around about this method with various responses, some builders say it’s a nightmare others say it’s not so bad as long as you make sure you do it on a solid surface, most homemade workbenches just flex too much. So I decided to give it a go, using the garage floor as my solid surface and surprisingly it went quite well. I did about 8 test rivets on a piece of scrap and after this I was confident enough that I could proceed with this method on my spars. It’s a bit slow though, I do about 60-70 rivets in an hour, but the results are not bad as you can see from the pictures. Today I managed to just over 100 rivets, starting from the middle of the spar and working my way out both ways, I also bolted the tie down angle to the spar.
