Fuselage

July 29, 2006

Had another great visit to Oshkosh and I'm charged up for more action in the skunkworks. Received the replacement F-6111 reinforcement ribs. Fit them up properly without cutting off any length. Just a little twist and grinding some angle on the bottom ends and they fit up nicely. Thanks to Mike Schipper for his posting of this on his website.

Drilled the three additional holes through the longeron into the F-757S plates. Machine countersunk the longerons for flush rivets. Repeated for the left side.

August 5, 2006

Removed top skins, stiffeners, gussets, reinforcement plates and channel and seat belt anchors. Deburred all holes and dimpled where required.

August 11, 2006

Dimpled aft top skins.

Did the usual cleaning, acid etching and alodining all the parts in preparation for priming.

August 12-13, 2006

Priming session for aft fuselage top skins, gussets, stiffeners, seat belt anchors and steps. As in previous entries, I'm using Dupont epoxy primer (gray) in the fuselage areas that will be painted with a finish coat. I'm using the AFS Systems primer-sealer (white) where no top coating will be applied.

August 16, 2006

Riveted the 4 F-656 gussets to the bulkheads. Assembled and riveted the F-635A elevator bellcrank assembly.

August 18, 2006

Riveted (well, almost) the F-695 forward gussets to longerons and firewall angle. I had some difficulty riveting the rivets in the corners. I decided to buy the "Main Squeeze" hand rivet squeezer to get at these rivets, since I can get a 4 inch yoke that will reach back into the corner. I decided against spending the extra money for a pneumatic squeezer since I am so far along in the project that it just isn't a wise spend.

August 21,24 2006

Riveted the aft canopy decks to the longerons. Fabricated my own bucking bar to reach under the narrow gap under the deck. It consisted of an l-shaped bucking bar and a chisel that I had previously ground down to use as a bucking bar.

There were a couple rivets that I just could not reach to buck. I'll have to give this a little more thought on how I'll buck these rivets. I may just put a couple blind rivets in there and call it done. These rivets gets covered by the canopy track.

Another problem that I encountered on the canopy decks is shown at left. The empty hole is prepunched and it falls too close to the canopy deck to rivet. The deck interferes with the rivet set. I decided to drill another hole inboard and rivet that so that I still have the 4 rivets supporting this location. I have yet to decide how I'll fill this empty hole.