The Zenith air over oil air riveter is just magic. Why anyone would want to build an aircraft without using avdex rivets is beyond me. It's such an easy system to use and produce a quality result.
SOLID RIVETS:
I had thought about using solid rivets in various places on the kit, mainly for aesthetic reasons - they look better. Caleb at Zenith pointed out that all the joints (with a few exceptions) are designed for avdex rivets, which are not as strong in shear as solids. The outcome of that is the joints won't be any stronger if I use solid rivets.
However one of the philosophies I've been stuck with since first working on cars and boats is that I like to make structure so strong that I don't ever have to worry about it again - I can therefore save my nervous energy for more productive pursuits than worrying if my Boat mast is about to fall down or a wing fall off.
For that reason I bought rivets MS2047DAD4 and 5 in a variety of lengths from Aircraft Spruce and also Aviaquip. Cleveland tool makes a nice little rivet gauge.
I bought a plain cheap rivet squeezer from Aircraft Spruce and a set of dies.
Initial tests demonstrated the following:
(1) It's hard work squeezing rivets all day by hand for anything more than 3/32.
(2) The design of solid riveted joints is different to pop riveted joints. When I tried to achieve the recommended formed head sizes on the rivet by following the specs, I invariably ended up with a mess. The reason is that in joining two .025 bits of aluminium, 1/8 and 5/32 solid rivets would never be used because the metal is just too thin, so the specs don't really apply until you have thicker material because you are "out of range". The solution to that is to either go back to avdex rivets or drop the 1.5 X Diameter length requirement for the unformed head. That produces a properly formed head although not quite as large as Mil -Spec would want, but still way stronger than an avdex rivet.
PAINT:
Being a former Airline engineering person (but not hands on), I was educated in Boeings approach to corrosion control - alodine, two part epoxy chromated undercoat and polysulphide rubber goo to seal out water from between joints.
Since aircraft primer cannot travel by airfreight I can't buy it from Aircraft Spruce - so you guessed it - its expensive and difficult to come by. PPG is a waste of time.
I eventually found the Sherwin Williams brand, handled by Aviation Surface coatings managed by the beautiful, practical and knowledgeable Clare. She sold me a gallon of Two part Strontium Chromate Epoxy Primer that goes over Alodine. Later I moved to a Sherwin Williams primer system which uses a first coat of a wash primer, since Alodine is not environmentally friendly to anyone and I ain't going to splash it around over large chunks of aircraft skin wearing rubber gloves - or my skin for that matter.
GOO:
Polysulphide rubber sealants are impervious to any known fuel or chemical. The standard used to be PRC1422 G 8 when I was in an airline. Now its 3M AC240-B-2. Yes its still looks like brown ****. It sticks like Brown **** to anything, including you.
However the resulting cured rubber is about like a car tire. I use it to keep dissimilar metals apart, seal out water, emergency back up thread locker and as adhesive - just a dab on a wire for example will stick it to the skin almost as well as a clamp.
An example of solid rivets, paint and goo on the rudder frame final assembly:
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