With the Fuse delivered I wanted a break from working on the wings. Flipping to chapter 25, I start to work on the fuselage!
Starting off I have to fabricate some stiffener brackets out of angle aluminum. Looking at the stock sent in the kit it I attempt to figure out what length of angle to cut. Since I ordered an extra 6 foot section “just in case” I go ahead and use one of the 3 foot sections for these parts as it looks like they include extra length anyway.
Once that’s done, I make the appropriate marks, match drill the stiffeners, then jump into making the seat brackets. Lots of final drilling of parts as this is a pretty beefy structure. I may have overdone it a bit by taking parts off after drilling them to deburr, only to have to re-install them again to drill something else. Nothing wasted by my time, so it’s fine.
Looks like the more recent kits from Vans already have the appropriate cutouts on the spar (25-3: Steps 1-3), so that was nice. Then it was on to prepping the landing gear supports for attaching to the spar. I had to deburr and fiddle with the drill busing called out in step 4 to allow my drill bit to sit nicely in it, but that wasn’t too bad. Used plenty of BoeLube to keep the drill bit cool as I drilled the larger holes.
Once done (off camera) I made sure everything was labeled and then disassembled and deburred so I could prime.