Vertical Stab rivets

Kids and I got the vertical ready to rivet on Monday and Tuesday we started popping rivets. It went pretty smooth at first, then I had to stop for some pneumatic rivet puller maintenance. Once we got past that, smooth sailing again. About half way through, the rivets started getting harder to install by hand. Is it normal to have the rivets difficult to place in hole prior to riveting? Seems like the closer we got to the end, the more frequent we found a tight hole. We did manage to make it through.

sorry guys. changed my search and found a thread.

On to the next section.

jfrank71 said:

Is it normal to have the rivets difficult to place in hole prior to riveting?

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JFrank, sometimes the rivets can be tight. A #30 reamer will work well if trying another rivet doesn't prove successful.

One thing I did during my build was purchase a couple General Tool 87 pocket automatic center punches they look very much like a mechanical pencil as can be seen in the following link.
https://www.generaltools.com/pocket-automatic-center-punch

The shaft of the center punch is 1/8" and comes in handy to improve alignment because there is some slop in the Clecos. I had more than one of the center punches and would use them to align parts as they were being Cecoed ... this makes a HUGE difference when installing rivets later, because if that center punch fits in the hole, a rivet will too. Also, filling up all the holes with Clecos during assembly is most helpful as well.

Happy building,