Author Archives: pclifton

Quite a varied day out in the shop. The main goal for today was to reach the point of flipping the fuselage over. The only spots left where I thought I could so solo skin riveting were on the aft … Continue reading →

So last time out I was worrying a bit about how to buck the skin rivets alongside the horizontal stab attach bars. That actually wasn’t the first time I’d worried about that, I’d seen that those were going to be … Continue reading →

I’m starting to wonder just how many parts there are going to be in the “fuselage riveting” series. Of course, when I’m doing mostly short work sessions, it’s somewhat unavoidable… Anyway, tonight I worked on riveting the aft side skins … Continue reading →

Again, not much to report tonight; I just shot the rivets in the right aft side skin through the bulkheads. The two rearmost bulkheads still aren’t riveted to the aft side skins, though – I’m kind of eternally putting those … Continue reading →

Well, I thought I’d get through the rest of the solo riveting tonight, but it didn’t quite happen. I started out working on the bulkhead just behind the rear seat, which has a double row of rivets. First off, it … Continue reading →

Short night tonight – I just shot all the applicable rivets in the right-side gear tower. Those were the most obnoxious rivets left that I’ll be shooting solo – the remaining solo rivets are all -3s and thus not nearly … Continue reading →

So this weekend has been kind of busy, and I haven’t had as much time for airplane work as I expected…but it’s kind of OK, because I’m discovering that this riveting work is kind of physically trying. The combination of … Continue reading →

This will be a straightforward post. I did basically nothing but riveting today, mostly on the forward side skins. I took care of most of the rivets through the gear weldments, the auxiliary longerons, and the joint with the mid … Continue reading →

So this is kind of a milestone. Tonights work session makes it an even 1000 hours that I’ve put into this project so far. I even went so far as to take a special photo of tonight’s last rivet, the … Continue reading →

Well, this barely even qualifies as a work session, but hey, I did do stuff. I picked up some more epoxy on the way home today – this turned out to be helpful after all. The JB Weld I was … Continue reading →