Category: Fuselage

Today I finished riveting the left side panel and moved on to the right panel. I completed all of the up drilling for rivets and then moved on to the two holes for the AN525 fasteners.

I drilled the rudder stop plates then proceeded to up sized the holes for rivets and the AN525s. After finishing the holes and deburring I riveted the lower longeron in place.

I finished installing the nut plates for the cover plates today. On the right hand side I also dimpled the skin and counter sunk the angle for the two rivets directly above the cover plate in order to allow for the installation of flush rivets so that the cover plate will fit flush to the skin.

Today I made up the access panel cover plates. The plans call for these to be fastened using sheet metal screws but I plan to use nut pates. I prefer to fasten the nut plates using counter sunk rivets which makes it fairly easy to also use counter sunk screws. I noticed that the cover plate for the right side of the fuselage will partially cover a couple of rivets so I am considering installing these as countersunk rivets. After making the cover plates I started to make up the nut plate spacers. Once I had the spacers complete I started to layout and drill the holes in the left skin for the nut plates. With the holes completed, I dimpled them and started the riveting.

Today I am continuing my work on the right aft fuselage side. I started with the vertical channels. After drilling and clecoing them place I moved on to the splice plates. These seem to be the most difficult. After a fair bit of fitting I was able to get the lower plates in place. I plan to use a .025 shim between the bottom of the plate and the lower longeron on the forward fuselage. The plates do not end up with the correct 22 inch spacing due to the fact that there is an allowance for the bottom skin under the aft longerons. I think the shim will work and will actually make the overlap of the forward fuselage bottom skin and the aft skin fit better.

Today I continued to work on the aft fuselage. I transferred the holes in the left skin to the longerons and to the vertical channels.

Today I continued working on the aft fuselage. I cut the longerons to length and worked on cleaning them up using scotch brite.

Tonight I drilled all of the pilot holes that are common to both left and right skins.