First order of business tonight was to finish bolting the weldments to both gear towers. When I did the right tower last night, I actually took the time to torque all the bolts, but tonight I refrained from doing that. I figure that if possible, I’ll remove the bolts before I spray whatever top coat I decide on for the interior. Anyway, with the weldments bolted to the towers, it was time to mate the towers to the forward floor assembly:
In the left foreground of the second photo are the two mid-cabin braces. These will be riveted to the back of the gear towers, which means they need to be clecoed in place. Except…oops…apparently I needed to skip a rivet on each of the towers where the braces rivet in assembly:
No worry though, I’m far beyond the point of stressing over drilling our a couple rivets. Once I got those out and clecoed the braces in place, I figured I was mostly done with this assembly for the night. I still need to go back and rivet the firewall together, so I got all the angles and weldments clecoed back onto that. And then I just kind of went wild clecoing stuff together just to get an idea of what the forward fuselage assembly was going to look like. None of this is really necessary, but it sure is motivating.
Baggage compartment bulkheads, floor, and walls clecoed in place (view from the rear side):
And from the front (the floor is sagging cause I didn’t cleco the stiffeners on):
And now with the firewall assembly clecoed on as well:
And that’s all for tonight. Tomorrow I should be able to get the firewall riveted. I actually think this temporary assembly may be beneficial, as it’ll hold the firewall in a nice position for me to shoot rivets. We’ll see if that bright idea actually works later…