Continuing to work on Chapter 28, I begin by pulling the plastic off the interior of the forward bottom skin. After I figure out the rib orientation, I cleco all the parts together. Then adding the bulkheads and system brackets, final drilling per the plans as I progressed.
Before I attached the firewall and tunnel to the skins, I had to go back and rivet on the Rudder Pedal brace that I didn’t do in the previous chapter. Took a try or two before I was able to successfully get the rivets installed to my standards.
Next I join the firewall and tunnel assembly to the skins and then stand the whole section on the firewall (with wood scrap under the firewall to prevent the flanges from bending!). Gracefully climbing onto the workbench, I then final drill all of the remaining holes common to the firewall, tunnel, and bottom skin.
Then, the whole assembly is back on the skin (technically the celcos that are in the skin) so I can final drill the firewall to ribs. Small side note, I had already dimpled the firewall where it attaches to the ribs, but not the ribs. In hind-sight I could have waited to dimple this section of the firewall till later and used my squeezer. Hindsight is 20/20. This was obvious to me once I attempted to install the floor pans, so I ended up taking the firewall off and dimpling those ribs to match to ensure everything lined up correctly. I didn’t end up capturing this swearing session on video but it did happen 🙂 Once re-assembled, the floor pans went in fairly easily (they are tight and almost a friction fit).
Then it’s on to installing the forward spar. I put some cribbing under the skins to support the spar as it is quite heavy. Match drill the holes called out in the plans, and install the temporary bolts to hold everything together. Not too difficult.
After some off-camera shuffling of items in the garage, I have my wife assist me in lowering the aft fuselage onto a workbench and I being the process of the initial mating of the forward and aft fuselage. Super exciting as you get these somewhat large parts mated together. I had to use lumber to lift the aft end of the fuse to allow the spar bolt holes to line up enough to get my Home Depot Aviation Department temporary bolts to fit. I bought 2 sets of temporary bolts. One set to for just this step. The other will be sanded down into bolt alignment pins for later in the build. I’m only going to install the “final” bolts and nuts once as I don’t want to damage them / purchase a second set if I don’t have to.
With everything connected, I did all the final drilling called out in the plans, crawled between the tables to final drill the skin to spar holes, then had to take the whole forward fuse apart so I could deburr and prime.