Pretty short night of work tonight. I started off by shooting those last two rivets in the mid-cabin braces. Getting those done was mildly tedious, but not too bad overall. Definitely not the best rivets I’ve ever shot, though. Then it was time to bring over the seat rib assembly and cleco it in place. The first rivets joining the assemblies go through the inboard seat ribs and the front seat ramp brackets. I thought these would be a royal pain, since most of them sit really close to the spar web, but they actually went quickly. It took me a bit to figure out how to shoot them, though. I ended up using the single-offset rivet seat, with some masking tape to keep it from rotating in the gun as I shot.
Next, I clecoed the outboard seat ribs, forward and aft, into place. These attach to the rear spar bulkhead with two rivets and one bolt each. The bolt goes through the rear spar attach bars, along with a spacer that I made probably a year ago. I didn’t torque the bolts yet, even though they’re surely installed for good now. This is because my tubes of torque seal have dried up beyond use, and my personal policy is to mark every fastener as soon as it’s torqued – this makes it easy to determine anything that hasn’t been torqued properly. I should have some more torque seal in a day or two.
In the meantime, there are a few more minor items to rivet to the seat rib assembly, and then it’s on to assembling the mid side skins and armrests. I’ll want to prime and paint those, so they’ll have to wait until this weekend, but I also still have the electric aileron trim brackets just clecoed in place – I think I’ll dig out the instructions for that kit and finish up its installation before I make that area any less accessible.
Here’s a photo of the joined cabin floor assembly:
