Vertical Stab spars and ribs

Here's the first gotcha of the plans.  The nose ribs stick out too far at the front edges, so you need to sand them down in order to not make outward dents in the skin.  I knew this ahead of time by looking at other blogs, and went after them with 120 grit sand paper.  I didn't do it enough though.  My skins got dented slightly, but after disassembly the dents shrunk somewhat.  So then I used the fluting pliers to shrink them some more.  Hopefully that works, haven't reassembled yet.

Once you get all the parts edge-deburred, you assemble them for the first time.  Here's the guts of the vertical stab:

Now that the spars and ribs are assembled, you put the skin on and match-drill.  The parts all have this blue vinyl stuff that protects them during shipping.  You pull that off.  On the exterior surfaces I cut it just around the rivet holes to leave some protection from scratching.  Some say this is overkill because it all gets scratched up as part of paint preparation anyway, but I still do it.