So progress remains slow. This week saw me taking on some new responsibilities at work, which kept me busier than usual, which in turn made me write the evenings off. On top of that, scheduling work sessions becomes a bit more challenging when you need a second person to help out.
Today we got through riveting another bulkhead and both of the baggage ribs. There was some creative contorting on my part to figure out how to securely hold a bucking bar inside those baggage ribs, especially at the aft end where the bellcrank bracket gets in the way. There were also several rivets that had to be drilled out and redone.
I also put some time into planning for my next big task – mounting the landing gear. Each inboard mount bracket needs to be used as a template to drill a 7/16” hole in the matching wear plate. Last week I ordered some new cobalt bits from Cleaveland for this purpose and boy, were they worth the money. I had no problem at all drilling through the steel wear plates.
The weather looks good for tomorrow, so my main goal for the day is going to be shooting epoxy primer on both gear legs. I probably won’t get to mounting them until late this week or next weekend, but I want to have them ready to go when that time comes.
In the meantime, we’ll just keep riveting. The next session should be fun – the outboard seat rib rivets look like they’ll be really challenging to buck. But once we get through those, it should start to become a lot easier.