Fuselage July 2006 Updates
July 03, 2006
Beginning to rivet the forward fuse.... - 5.0 hrs

On to the forward bottom skin. First I installed the 2 inboard floor stiffeners. Per Dan's site I riveted where these stiffeners connect at the forward and rear points. 3 rivets each. Just seems like these would be easy to do with the floor off and I can't see any problems. Dan did his with the floor in place and had to wiggle around the floor skin with the squeezer. Keeping my fingers crossed that I have not done this too soon.

Also I riveted the one rivet of the bottom longeron to the 902 rib on each side. Next I unclecoed each side skin around the bottom longeron to allow the foward floor skin to slip into place.

With the floor skin in place I used a carbide bit to slightly enlarge the hole to fit the main landing gear weldments. I used a sanding flapper wheel to finish off the holes. Once I get the canoe flipped I will have to do some fine tuning on the bolt holes it looks like. Hopefull it is just drilling out the powder coating on the weldments.

When I moved on to the next one I found that I had cut the bottom longeron 1/4 inch short. I ended up having to remove the bottom forward floor again and using a cutoff wheel in the dremal tool to cut out the extra 1/4 inch to allow clearance for the weldment. Just a pain having to uncleco everything and puting it back together after.

Last I installed the clips in the 704 bulkhead to longeron connection. Then tank bracket doubler and spacers into the 902 rib area. Now it should be ready for riveting. I will double check everything one more time and review the Dan C site one last time so I don't miss anything.



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.