Fuselage

February 6, 2006

Dimpled the baggage floors and tunnel cover for flush screws. Deburred right longeron and began to machine countersink the longeron rivet holes.

February 7, 2006

Received my order of single leg nutplates and installed them on the F-705 bulkhead where required. Finished up countersinking the right longeron. Cleaned up some scratches on the longeron with die grinder that were left from when I was putting the bends in then wiped down with lacquer thinner to remove ink marks.

February 8, 2006

Deburred rivet holes on left longeron and began machine countersinking. Had to get a little creative in clamping the longeron to countersink due to the various bends in the longeron.

February 9, 11, 2006

Finished up countersinking left longeron. Cleaned up with scotchbrite wheel on angle grinder to remove scratches, wiped down with lacquer thinner to remove ink marks. Had a few nutplates to install on the F-706 bulkhead. Drilled some additional holes in the aft bulkheads to accommodate some additional conduit runs. Began setting up the shop for prep work on parts for cleaning, etching and alodining.

February 12, 2006

Cleaned, acid etched and alodined fuselage parts. Not all the parts are shown in these pics.

February 17-20, 2006

Set up the temporary paint booth and primed the center and forward fuselage parts. Since most of these parts will be top coated when I paint the cockpit, I'm using two part epoxy primer from PPG, Concept DP50.

It was interesting to try and paint the almost 12 foot long longeron. I painted half of it then turned it around through a hole in the booth wall and painted the other half.