Good news first - I talked to Pete at CubCrafters about the scrape to the spar. He said that he would buff the scrape out more but that it looked completely fine to him and that I don’t need to replace it. Just to be safe, he also double checked with their head engineer. She didn’t indicate that she saw any problems either. This is create news because it means that, even though I messed up, it wasn’t bad enough to need to replace the spar or anything like that!
Now we were still left with the problem of removing the rivet though. Craig came over today and we tried a few strategies to bend the rivet out of the way or to even bend it so much that the stem would snap off on the back side. We even went out and got some angled needle nose pliers to try to do this. Unfortunately, none of these strategies worked.
We did end up making a little “shield” out of aluminum that we could fit between the rivet and the spar bulb to protect the spar from further damage. We did have the thought that we could try to push the rivet step out with this shield in place and hope that it protects the spar while deflecting the rivet.
Craig also had the idea to build a jig that would allow us to use a rotary cutter on a Dremel tool to cut the rivet stem away on the back side. This would need to be a very precise jig so that we could ensure that there would be no way for the Dremel to cut into the spar itself. If we could make a jig like this then it seems like it would definitely make the rivet a lot easier to remove and would be pretty safe.
Since we had the idea of a jig for a cutter that could be safer than the shield idea we decided to try to reconvene after the jig was made and to see which strategy seemed like the better idea. I also said that I would contact CubCrafters to see if they had any ideas. Even though it is a bummer to be stuck on the build by this rivet and to have to leave it once again without being able to remove it I am ecstatic that the spar is okay and doesn’t need to be replaced.