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 side skins between the two aft most bulkheads, the mid side skins just behind the wing spar passthrough, and the lower edge of the mid side skins where they rivet in assembly with the outboard seat ribs.

The rivets at the spar passthrough were a lot of fun. There are two rows of rivets here; the forward row only goes through the skin and the center section reinforcement plate. These are “inside” the center section, so bucking them required reaching into the passthrough to hold a bucking bar in there. It wasn’t too challenging, but still not much fun. It was impossible to avoid smashing my fingers against the center section bar while riveting in some spots, and doing this on both sides meant that both hands got smashed equally. The other row of rivets, which additionally goes through the center section bulkhead flanges, was comparatively simple.

I tried shooting the rivets at the lower edge of the mid side skins, but quickly decided they should be a two-person job. The bottom skins stick out a bit where they’ll mate with the wing, and so shooting these requires my looong rivet set. This, in turn, makes it rather awkward to shoot and buck while reaching way down inside the cabin. I shot one rivet like this and it was barely acceptable. I figured the quality was likely to get worse if I kept trying, so I gave up on those.

The aft side skin rivets were a bit tedious as well. There’s not a lot of room at all in that aft most bay, especially when shooting the rivets close to the bulkheads…but I got it done.

Any further skin riveting would have required flipping the fuselage – but as I mentioned before, there were other tasks to do with it right side up, which I decided to take care of first. First up was riveting the aft deck in place, which was easier than I expected:

Next I riveted the aft armrest bulkheads to the gussets that attach them to the rear spar carry through assembly. Then it was time to rivet a couple of floor angles to gussets on the forward armrest bulkheads – and here was where the day started to get interesting. I clecoed the angles in place, then noticed that they had nutplate attach holes, but no nutplates attached. I looked back through the manual and saw no reference to riveting the nutplates. I figured it would be far easier to rivet the nut plates with the angles out of the plane, but I wanted to make sure it was OK, so I went in for some research. Turns out there’s a spacer that goes on top of the angles, but under the floor, and it needs to be riveted in assembly with the nutplates. The problem there was that I’d already countersunk the angles for nutplates. That’s not a good thing if another piece of alumni will go on top and leave a void there…well, time to add something else to my shopping list.

Next, I riveted the forward armrests to the center section bulkheads, then clecoed the bulkhead caps in place. They won’t get riveted yet, but presumably should provide some rigidity while other work is going on. The next item would have been to rivet the seat back support plates in place, but they needed to be primed and painted first. So that left nothing to do but to flip the thing.

To do this, I installed the tailwheel spring to act as a pivot point at the rear, then moved the rear sawhorse so the spring was sitting in it instead of the tail structure. This would let it be a pivot point while I moved the forward end. At the forward end, I just rolled the fuselage on its side, then over complete y so it rested on the longerons. I also moved the forward sawhorse back a bit; this raised the fuselage up a touch and also gave me some extra breathing room in terms of sawhorse width. I’d initially thought I might want to raise the forward sawhorse to provide more working room under the fuselage, but as it is, I can sit on the floor and be at the perfect height to work underneath.

So here’s what the garage looks like now:

Rather than jump right back into riveting, I decided to get out the forward bottom skin and fit it in place. The practical reason here was to see if the two blind rivets I set forward of the spar pass through would interfere with fitting the skin, but mostly I just wanted to see it in place and cackle a bit. Reading forward in the manual, though, I realized I made a mistake a long time ago. When I installed the forward landing gear crossmember here, the manual said not to rivet it. I took this to mean not to rivet it to the skin, and didn’t do that, but I did rivet it to the intercostal ribs. That, it turns out, was a mistake, because that spot also has to be riveted in assembly with the forward bottom side skins.

The really fun part about this is that the factory heads are in a super tight location:

I pretty quickly determined that it would be nearly impossible to get a drill in there to drill these out – and if I messed up the intercostal ribs, things would get worse since I’d have to remove them as well. So I decided instead to grind off the shop heads – this would ruin the crossmember, but that seemed better than the consequences of ruining the ribs. So I got out the die grinder and a cutting bit and went to work (I really need to clean the camera lens):

Yup, there’s another item for the shopping list. Anyway, back to fitting the forward bottom skin! I was able to get in place even with the blind rivets in place, which was nice. Then I decided to cleco the cooling ramp in place as well – but the flanges interfered. I assembled this part over a year ago, and part of the work was trimming the flanges for clearance. Turns out I trimmed the wrong ends of the flange. Another item for the shopping list.

I’m not really sure why they have you put the cooling ramp together so early. The manual even makes a point if how you won’t actually install the thing until much later. If I was just making the thing now, my mistake with the trim would have been obvious, but when I was working off the plans, that wasn’t really the case. Oh well.

I wrapped up the day by crawling under the fuselage and riveting the rear armrests to the rear bulkhead – these rivets where impossible to get to from above, but easy while sitting under the fuselage. The only downside was that it was kinda hot under there. I also took those seat back mount plates outside and primed and painted them. Whenever I get around to flipping the fuselage over again, they’ll be ready to go.

And that’s it for today. Tomorrow Josie should be able to help me work on some of those two-person rivets. The end of fuselage riveting is in sight!

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 a problem a few days ago. But after thinking it over, I ended up working out a fairly creative solution. I have a gasket scraper which was thin enough to fit in the tight spot, but didn’t have a sharp edge like a chisel (which could cause damage if it contacted the wrong thing). I then used carpet tape to attach my mini tungsten bucking bar to the flat of the scraper, and added some duct tape to hold it all together (and also because no ghetto tool is complete without some duct tape). The end result was, in effect, an ad hoc footed bucking bar:

I was a little worried about how it was going to work out, and I considered trying it on a test rivet, but ultimately I just went for it. And it turned out that it was ridiculously easy to use, and worked great. Those eight rivets I’d been worrying about were all done in about 15 minutes.

Next, I set about shooting all the rivets at the junction of the aft side skins and the aft bottom skin. These were pretty straightforward; the main issue was they required lots of bending over (like many of the rivets I’ve been doing lately) and weren’t visible from above. So it was a mildly tedious process of shooting a few rivets, bending way into the fuselage to check the shop heads, and so on. Plus there were just a lot of these rivets to shoot. But I got all of them done today, with the exception of the ones way back by the tail spring mount. Space is tight in there, and I’m going to save those for a time when I’m not tired.

I also riveted the rear lap belt mount points to the aft side skins, and finally shot some rivets through the mid side skins and into the outboard seat ribs. At this point, I’ve done just about all of the rivets that I think I can manage solo. There are the aforementioned rivets in the tail, and I also want to try the rivets at the bottoms of the mid side skins, though I think those may prove to be too annoying to do solo.

I was originally planning on inverting the fuselage as soon as I finished the solo riveting, but after looking ahead in the instructions, fuselage riveting is followed by flipping the fuselage over again, doing a few minor riveting tasks, and then inverting it once again for installation of the bottom forward skin and the main landing gear. That seems kind of repetitive, so my plan is to do the admin stuff and then just invert the thing once both for riveting and the gear and stuff. We’ll see how that works out…

In the meantime, here’s the fuselage sporting far fewer clecos than it’s had for a while:

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 to the two aft most bulkheads. Space is pretty tight in this area, so it was kind of slow going – but I managed to not mangle any rivets, which was nice. I also discovered that there were some more rivets between the aft side skins and the upper longerons that could be squeezed – these are at the aft end, further back than where there will be rivets in common with the turtleneck skin.

I still have some rivets on these bulkheads left to do, though. On the forward side of one bulkhead are riveted the two large bars that the horizontal stab will attach to. These bars are very much in the way of bucking the skin rivets. I was able to shoot the bottom three rivets on each side – the bars are angled away from the skin here, so access is OK – but I stopped there. None of my bucking bars will fit in the tight space from here on up, so I’m going to have to get creative. I’ve heard of guys using axe heads, chisels, and so forth as ad hoc bucking bars – really, anything that has heft and a smooth surface can do in a pinch – so I’ll see what I can come up with. Then maybe I can finally turn this thing over and start working on the bottom rivets…

Here are a couple photos of the tight space created by the stab attach bars. At the top, there’s maybe 1/4” between the bar and the bulkhead flange:

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 off. It’s pretty tight quarters back there and those will definitely be challenging.

Pretty soon it’s going to be time to flip the fuselage over so we can start shooting the rivets on the bottom…

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 was kind of uncomfortable shooting those due to lots of bending over and so forth, and second, I botched a couple rivets and had to drill them out. One of those, I opened the hole a bit, so I got to do a good old NAS rivet instead. Once I’d finished the bulkhead, I riveted the armrest to the skin.

At that point, I could have either done more bending over and riveting, or shot some paint instead, and I chose the latter. You see, despite my best-laid plans to try and prime and paint all visible surfaces before beginning final assembly, I overlooked that bulkhead, which will be visible to the sides of the rear seat. Not a whole to be done here except to prime and paint it in place.

I couldn’t do my usual thorough scuff and prep here, so I just did the best I could. Then I masked off the floor and tailcone area to prevent overspray (not strictly necessary, but hey…I’m a bit OCD I guess):

Then I shot primer before going inside for dinner, giving it about an hour to dry (it doesn’t take long in the Houston summer heat). Then I went back out and shot the topcoat. Here’s the finished product after removing all the masking:

Looks good to me!

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 as tough. So the next work session should be riveting the armrest/bulkheads/etc on the right side.

Aaaaand that’s all. Nothing really worth photographing tonight.

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 bending over and frequently reaching down into the fuse while handling the rivet gun and the bucking bar…well, my arms get tired pretty quick, and then I try to stand up and my back has some unkind words for me. But I’m making it through…

Today I shot the last remaining row of rivets through the aft center section bulkheads. Then I shot all the rivets from the forward side skin to the left gear tower – I decided that the -5 length rivets were OK after all. Finally, I riveted the junction of the left mode side skin to the aft side skin. This was a fun spot – the instructions say not to rivet the rear armrest until after this junction (which also included a bulkhead) was riveted. I understood why once I got to it – there’s one rivet that is impossible to buck with the armrest in place. The armrest has to be unclecoed and swung up out of the way. Once the bulkhead was done, I riveted the armrest to the skin.

Finally, I moved back to the aft side skin and riveted the next two bulkheads. This still leaves the two aft most bulkheads, but at this point I felt like it was time to call it a night. I’ll probably need two more evening work sessions to get the right side of the fuse to the same point, then I’ll have to decide whether to try some of the more difficult rivets solo, or if I should flip the “canoe” and get into two-person riveting mode.

In the meantime, here’s the left side of the fuselage, mostly devoid of clecos:

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 side skins, including the rivets through the forward center section bulkheads. I also squeezed the keeper rivets through the upper longerons, but here I did the rivets all the way from the firewall to the tail. No reason not to, plus they provided a nice break from some of the contortions required for shooting the other rivets.

I initially skipped the rivets through the gear tower side flanges, because when I checked the rivets called out in the plans, I felt they were too short, and there were nowhere near enough of the next longest ones to get the job done. So I was going to just order a bunch of the longer rivets, but later in the day, I checked the length again, and while they were a touch short, it was nothing show-stopping. So I guess I’ll use the called-out rivets after all…tomorrow.

Over the next couple days, I think I should be able to finish all the rivets that can be done solo, then I’ll have to recruit Josie for some of the more obnoxious ones. But I’m hoping to have all the riveting done by next weekend.

I also couldn’t resist doing another one of those mostly-pointless temporary assemblies just so I could cackle at the airplane-looking thing I’d created. I put the windscreen frame in place and clecoed the forward top skin in place, then added the setback support for good measure:

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 1000-hour rivet:

Anyway, tonight’s goal was to get the forward side skins clecoed in place and maybe a few rivets shot as well. Before the skins can be installed, though, the joint between them and the firewall flange must be sealed. The other night, I dug out my tube of Fire Barrier 2000 and cleaned out the dried stuff in the nozzle – or so I thought. In truth, I ended up spending another half-hour or so digging crud out of the nozzle before it finally started to flow freely. Only then was I finally able to lay a thin bead along the firewall flange and put the skins in place. This joint won’t actually get riveted for some time – when the cowling is fitted and the piano hinge is installed for the joint. So for now I just clecoed every hole to get a good clamp while the sealant cured (visible at the left part of this photo):

Next up, there are a few blind rivets at the bottom of the forward and mid side skins where they sit atop the center section bars. The corners of each skin have to be pulled out to get these blind rivets set, so that’s done now, while adjacent clecos can be removed to help out:

I actually got a bit concerned after setting these rivets – turns out I was only supposed to do the two in each mid side skin. At first I thought the forward bottom skin might sit in assembly here, but upon closer inspection, that doesn’t seem to be the case. I think having the blind rivet will just make it a little more difficult to get the bottom skin edge in place between the forward side skin and the lower longeron. I’ll poke around the instructions a bit to confirm – I can always just drill those out tomorrow if I have to. I’d rather not, though, simply due to the danger of drilling too far and into the are, which would be bad, bad, bad.

Finally, I began setting solid rivets along the top of the forward side skin. Most of the rivets between the skin and the upper longeron are also in common with the forward top skin, and so they’re left open for now. Only a small number of keeper rivets, which will lie under the top skin, are set. Most of these I was able to set with the squeezer, but a couple required shooting. No big deal.

Tomorrow I’ll start shooting lots and lots of rivets between the forward side skins and the understructure. I was thinking there would be a lot of two-person riveting for the fuselage, but now that I look more closely, I think the vast majority of these rivets I can shoot solo. Only the rivets on the bottom of the fuselage are going to require two people, I think…well, maybe a few others in odd places as well. But in general I feel they’ll be the exception, not the rule.

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 going to use originally would have been dark gray, but I was able to get some clear stuff. This way, if there’s any excess that squeezes out, it won’t be obvious and ugly.

Anyway, back home, I cleaned the surfaces one last time, mixed up some epoxy, applied it to the perimeter of the vent, and stuck it in place:

Then I weighted it down with – what else – a jug full of clecos:

Aaaand that’s it. Tomorrow I figure I’ll apply the firewall sealant to the forward side skins and cleco them in place. Then it really and truly will be some for some riveting.