Yesterday evening, I kind of shot myself in the foot.
Being in a hurry to seal the firewall and get the bottom skin in place for rivetting, I forgot to peel off the bleu plastic from underneath the overlapping part of bottom skin and center fuselage skin.
Realised it only after sealing the firewall so no more possibility to remove the bottom skin. It took quite a bit of head scratching, patience and somebody with small fingers (read: Cindy) to peel that stuff out of their.
In the end it worked and so now it's rivetting time again. This time on the bottom forward skin.
Here's how needle-head looks before rivetting starts.
And here's the aftershot how she looks with the floor stiffeners rivetted on at about one and a half hour later.
Continued on the F704 main bulkhead overlap attachments and shot those.
Looks like they are all done but actually they are not. The 4 rivets attaching the floor stiffeners to the front half of the F704 bulkhead have not been set. It did countersink the F704 and center fuselage bottom skin, but noticed I forgot to dimple the forward bottom skin. Grrr... bit of a drawback. I'll have to see how to get the bottom skin dimpled now that it can't be removed anymore. I tried bith the 3/32" pop dimpler but didn't have a lot of succes so far as the skin is too thick and the male die won't push the material in the countersink. Will have to come up with another plan.
Cool view, almost no more cleco's. Just the two rows in the front. The second row will be done in a next session. That one attaches the bottom skin to the firewall stiffener angle. The first row will remain clecoed as this is where the cowling hinges will be installed later one. For now, that's the row that is sealed to the firewall sides.
Good looking shop heads again.
Also rivetted those two remaining rivets on the baggage bulkhead intersection while we were at it.
Still not happy about the look of these but decided to leave it alone as is because drilling them out might do even more damage than before.
View from the outside. Looks ok.
