hILLVILLE. No, the leather is glued over the pilot with 3 M type 77 spray glue on both surfaces and then stretched to shape. Easy as pie!
I found that I needed a piece of 1/8 scrap glued to the back side of the last buldhead for the horz stab to butt aginst. If the horz and vert stabs are completley locked, that is, if there is no gap in the interlocking slots then you are as far forward as you can go. When mine locked in, the tabs in the horz stab were still short of the rear bulkhead. Hence the scrap shim. You can ask Ken about it but I think the horz stab should have a glue joint at the forward end against the former/bulkhead.

From your pictures it looks like you still have to shape the leading edges. If that is so I would do that prior to installing them. It is much less difficult with them out of the plane and you lessen the risk of cuttung up the surrounding surfaces as you sand the edges.

Yours looks just like mine did at the same piont. All the gaps go away when you cover the tail unit. I have to do mine over so I will shoot some photos of how I do it.

More later.