Empennage - Vertical Stabilizer

After reading the plans a couple of times, I dove into initiating the Vertical Stabiliser. I realised early that it's so important to understand not just the current page you're on, but read ahead so I have a full picture of how the whole section goes together.

Found all the components...

...plus the skin of course.

The plans say to prime after performing all the alignment (cleco and match drill). I get that, but before priming, comes removing the shiny aluminium oxide layer with Scotchbrite. That part is more difficult after the fluting is done so I decided to do the Scotchbriting before the fluting and plan to get the etching/priming completed in the coming days. As I will be using the Stewart Systems water based etching and primer products, the instructions say to remove the 'aluminium shine' during the scrubbing process with the EkoEtch. I figure it won't matter if I remove the 'shine' prior.

Vert Stab put together and all match-drilled...

Skin clecoed and match drilled also...