Tonight, I wasn't really in the mood to work on the left elevator.  Remember, everything I stated learned up to this date; has been flushed...

My goal, anyway, was to back rivet the stiffeners onto the elevator skin, bend over the skin, insert the elevator skeleton, and final drill all remaining holes.

Well, I DIDN'T MAKE IT!!!!  In the pictures below, you can see that one of the stiffeners got bent over when I attempted to back rivet the farthest rivet on the elevator trailing edge (DAMAGED STIFFENER:  E-720J, BOTTOM SIDE).

Well, the reason that this got bent over is that I used the flush rivet set in the rivet hammer instead of the back rivet set.  I should have picked up my first clue I was doing something wrong when I had to drill out one rivet on the bottom side that set "high" and was not flush with the skin.

This rivet set below is what I should have used.  Below, you see a spring loaded sleeve on the end of the rivet set.  This spring and sleeve arrangement holds to the two pieces of aluminum together tightly while the rivet hammer recoils.  Without the two pieces being riveted held tightly together, it can result in a rivet that sets high -OR- in my case, a bent stiffener.

This is what happens when your mind is not on the task at hand!!

I was fortunate to have some blank stiffener stock (from a Van's training kit) and fabricated a new stiffener.  In the training kit, no holes or cutouts are marked.  I used the damaged stiffener to transfer all dimensions to the "blank" stiffener material.

The fabrication of the new stiffener took me less than 1/2 hour.  However, since I prime most internal surfaces with AZKO 2-part epoxy primer, it took me another 3 hours to get the new stiffener (and a couple of additional parts) primed.  DANG!!!

The new stiffener turned out GREAT, but it just made for a frustrating night.

The new stiffener looked so good, you can't tell it from the partially fabricated stiffeners that come with the kit.