Not much to report tonight. I gave the seat floors a good cleaning and back riveted all but one of the stiffeners in place. The one I left iff gets riveted in assembly with the rear setback hinge – that’ll be on the docket for the next work session.
An interesting tidbit here: the instructions specifically say not to back rivet six of the stiffeners here, which are at the forward part of the two floors. I could not for the life of me figure out why I was supposed to delay those, so I asked around on VAF after the last session. The consensus seems to be that it’s to make it easier to install the floors, which does make sense – it takes some maneuvering and bending to work them around the bulkheads and such. But it really seems like a pain to rivet these after the floors are in place.
One person reported that he riveted his ahead of time and was able to get them in. His reasoning was that if he ever has to pull the floors, he’ll have to get them out with the stiffeners in place, might as well figure it out now. I’m thinking more in terms of being able to get these pieces primed and painted before installation – I’m trying to avoid, as much as possible, doing any painting in place inside the cabin.
So anyway, sometime next year when it comes time to install these for good, we’ll see if I end up regretting this decision. In the meantime, here’s a photo of a floor with some stiffeners:
