Boy, it’s been a while since I did a good old-fashioned cleco-match drill-uncleco work session. Kind of nice to do something so mindless, actually…
With the prep work on the harness anchors complete, tonight was just match-drilling the aft top skin to the bulkheads and other components. First, though, I had to knock a few years’ worth of collected dust and spiderwebs off the skin. If I’d followed the construction manual to the T, I’d have gone ahead and removed the blue vinyl and deburred the skin edges, but I figure I’ll leave the vinyl on until I’m about ready to put the skin on for good. For now, I just want to get to the point of riveting the upper bulkheads in place.
Anyway, with the skin cleaned off a bit, on it went. Getting it clecoed was a little interesting, particularly aligning the two center bulkheads, where I can’t just take one hand and move it into alignment. A straight pick was useful for inserting into one nearly-aligned hole, and then maneuvering the bulkhead so an adjacent cleco could go in. Then it was just a bunch of match-drilling.
Look ma, a turtledeck!
And then it all came back apart again… Look ma, no more turtledeck!
Next I get to do a bunch of deburring, plus figuring out what parts of the manual to do now vs. save for later when the skin goes on for good. I suppose the reasonable thing would be to just get deburring and dimpling done on the bulkheads and maybe the other parts that go in assembly. I’m thinking I can probably get these bulkheads riveted in place in my next work session.