Fuselage February 2005 Updates
February 21, 2005
Construction of Firewall

Saturday morning got started on drilling out all the holes in the stainless firewall. There are 2 sizes of holes. #30 around the edges and #40 in some of the cross members.

I used lots of biolube on the bits. Next was lots of counter sinking all the aluminum angles to mate up with the dimples in the firewall. I mounted the countersink tool in the drill press. Setup the proper depth and away we go. This took allot longer than I thought it would.

Next I setup the DRDT-2. I cannot emphasize enough how cool this tool is. Even with the stainless firewall this thing just cranks out perfect dimples and nice and quite. The only problem is I could not dimple around the edges of the firewall without a longeron yoke. I called Phil B. and he said I could borrow his to finish up. I will get that tomorrow.

Looking at the dimples of the #30 holes in the firewall I rechecked the countersunk holes. I found I had to redo most of the #30 holes to get the dimples to seat properly.

Last I buffed all the stiffeners and gussets with a scothbrite pad and preped them for priming. Monday is a holiday and the weather cleared up so I was able to get the priming done. Then Harley Dave called and asked me to go take his boat out for a test ride. We met Rob from Custom Kolors at the lake for the test ride. I talked with Rob about doing the paint on the plane when completed. I think he would do an awesome job.




This website was built to document my work in compliance with the FAA requirements needed to certify my aircraft.
My experiences and comments are by no means to be considered as instructions on how to build any aircraft.