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Here I am riveting the horizontal stabilizer skin to the skeleton.

I have the rivet gun in my right hand, and my left hand is inside holding holding the bucking bar.

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After riveting the skeleton together, the next trick is to get the skins clamped on the skeleton.

The skins come with pilot holes where each rivet will go, and the real trick is to get them all clamped up so the pilot holes are lined up on the centres of the spars and ribs.

Then you drill through the pilot holes to make the rivet holes in the skeleton. After drilling each hole, you put a cleco in to hold the pieces together temporarily until the riveting is done. All those things sticking out are the clecos.

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Here is the horizontal stabilizer skeleton in the jig.

The jig is made of wood, and it basically provides a stable structure to hold everything in alignment.

After building the jig, you use plumb lines, levels, measuring tape, etc to get all the spars and ribs properly aligned, then you clamp them in place.

Then, you drill the holes for the rivets that hold the skeleton together, deburr the holes, and rivet the works together.

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Here I am riveting the pieces that make up the front spar of the horizontal stabilizer. I am using a hand squeezer to mechanically squeeze the rivets.

The front spar is made from four large pieces of aluminum riveted together.

The rivets can either be driven with an air powered rivet gun, or mechanically compressed (or "squeezed") with a hand (or air) powered squeezer. The squeezer can only reach rivets that are close to the edges of the material, so there are many places where the only choice is to use the rivet gun.

I get more consistent results using the squeezer, so I try and mechanically squeeze as many possible.