Wing spars bolted on

Fuselage, spars

The aft fuselage required lots of trimming to get the aft spar inserted.

Fwd and aft fuselage

Mated the fwd and aft fuselage. Yet another faulty part from the machined angle components kit. This time it was the large lower splice piece, one on each side that has the pilot holes 2-3 mm wrong. Ordered more aluminium from ACS.

Some deburring and countersinking/dimpling to do first. Then while waiting for the aluminium sheet to make new components, I think I will drill up the holes for the wing spars and seat etc. Starting to look like a real aircraft.

I am starting to have a real problem now - too little space in the shop. I wonder how to fix that without totally redoing the shop.

Fuselage tail finished

Finished riveting the fuselage tail cone and turtle deck. The picture was a bit poor. The skin is really perfectly smooth, it is the reflection that makes it look like it is dented all over.

Found this strange rivet among the others. It appears to be SS but with a rusty stem, hmm

Started on the front fuselage. Deburred all edges and drilles some pilot holes. Have to study the drawing some more, because following the drawing will not work with countersunk rivets here either.

Fuselage riveting

Finished with all deburring and priming and all the details needed (I hope). Started riveting together the aft fuselage.

Aft fuselage

Drilled and reamed the holes for the bolts, and a few leftovers on the formers and angles.

Fuselage

Some more drilling

Fuselage

More fuselage skins

Fuselage

Things are stating to shape up. Have to cleco together the stuff to find out how it fits together.

Fuselage

Countersunk all the holes for the bottom skin.

Fuselage

Drilled more holes for bolts and rivets on the aft fuselage. The bottom skin is supposed to be riveted on late in the build process, but I have to dimple and countersink, and that is easiest to do when the fuselage can be laid upside down.

The predrilled holes in the elevator trim mechanism does not fit the predrilled holes in the fuselage. This means there will be too mane holes drilled, so I decided to leave out three of the holes.

Fuselage

More bits and pieces for the fuselage.

Fuselage stuff

Purchased a Bosch PBD 40 bench drill press. It is one of those tools I will regret I didn't purchase years ago. Really nice tool, compact and easy to operate.

Then I loaned these reamers from the lab mechanical shop at work. One adjustabe 11-12 mm and one 8 mm.

Getting perfectly perpendicular and exact sized holes for the bushings became a piece of cake.

Dimples/countersunk and primed the mating surfaces of the fuselage bits and pieces.

Aft fuselage

Spent lots of time just studying the drawings. The sequence of assembling is not entirely clear and the it will be impossible to follow when using flush rivets. Things has to be countersunk/dimpled and that cannot be done when half of the skin is already riveted on. On the point about flush rivets the drawings are completely lacking information.

Things are shaping up. The aft fuselage is clecoed together and I started updrilling. I made the rudder pulleys, so they are ready to be riveted on when the time comes. I managed to updrill one pulley so the hole became very skewed, and ordered new ones.

Aft fuselage

Cut the inspection holes and started clecoing together.

F20-F22

Found all the bits and pieces. Two machined angle components were missing, had to make new ones. Chamfered and bent the pieces.