Well, this was mostly a day spent stress testing my air drills and compressor. Prior to that, though, I made a Home Depot run for some lumber, with which I made a couple of sawhorses. Now that I’ve finished drilling the tailcone, we’ll need to move the fuselage to these so it sits low enough for me to easily lean inside and do some drilling from in there. The sawhorses are specially-made for this job; one of them is 3’ wide but only a foot tall, and will sit under the forward end of the fuse, while the other is 2’ tall but only a foot wide, and it will support the tail. These should result in the fuselage being roughly level while it’s on the horses. I’m going to add some angle-cut blocks on the tail horse to help hold the tail securely, so that will allow me to adjust the level attitude if I wish – though there’s no particular call to have it be level right now.

Anyway, these are the saw horses:

And now back to the fuselage. With all the drilling done on the forward side skins, next the mid side skins get drilled. First the upper longerons are drilled in assembly, then all the other holes get match drilled. Next up are the aft bottom skins; these are lots of fun since I basically have to lie on the floor while drilling. And then the real fun begins, drilling the aft side skins to the longerons. This isn’t particularly challenging, there are just a l-o-t of holes. Once I got my drilling rhythm down, I think the compressor was usually running for 10+ minutes at a time. It actually got to a point where moisture was blowing through/out of the drill; I guess the air in the tank was so saturated that the water was condensing as the air expanded in the hose. I guess I’ll be wanting to go ahead and drain that tank again soon…

Here’s one of the longerons clamped to the aft side skin prior to drilling:

And a forest of clecos on the other aft side skin:

Speaking of clecos, these are all the silver ones I have left over after all this work, with the exception of a can of pretty junky ones on a shelf somewhere. Hopefully I don’t have to use those, I don’t want them fraternizing with my nice shiny clecos:

I think tomorrow we’re going to go to an AOPA safety seminar in the evening, so I suppose Tuesday we’ll move the fuselage assembly out of the garage, get the floor swept (all that drilling made a ridiculous mess), and then get the fuselage set up on the saw horses. Pretty soon the aft top skin will go on, along with the cockpit roll bars, and at that point I think I’m going to have to throw a pillow or something in there and sit in this thing for the first time.

Started out today by beginning to rivet the rear seat. This was somewhat interesting due to the shape of this thing. In general, it was challenging to find some way to hold the pieces steady while I riveted; in particular, the curved top section made it awkward to use the squeezer. So what I’m getting it is that it took a little longer than I expected. But still, it’s done, and so I of course put it in place in the fuselage for a photo op:

Then I got back to work on drilling the fuselage. I got through drilling everything on the left forward side skin before quitting for dinner. Looking ahead, and based on the rate I was going at today, I think it’s possible I could finish match drilling everything back to the tailcone tomorrow. I’m going to run to Home Depot in the morning to pick up materials to make a couple sawhorses; the setup I have now is kind of wobbly and not exactly confidence-inspiring, plus I’ll soon need to climb into this thing to do some match drilling, so I’ll need it lower to the floor and definitely on something more sturdy than these cheap plastic sawhorses.

Tonight I finished drilling one hinge half to the seat back and then clecoed the whole thing together for match drilling. Pulled it apart, deburred everything, and started to to some riveting, then decided to just wait until tomorrow. Once I get this seat back riveted, I’ll put it aside and get back to all the fuselage drilling.

Short night. I started working on the rear seat back, even though I got in my package from Avery that included new shiny drill bits. I think I’ll wait until the weekend to go on another drilling spree.

Most of tonight was just deburring the edges and crevices of the seat back parts. The rear seat is more complex than the front one, so lots more little spots to clean up. Then I cut the hinge for the bottom of the seat. The plans call for removing four eyelets in the center of the hinge. I’m not quite sure yet what this is for; I guess something passes through here, but I dunno what.

That’s about it. I should be able to finish this seat up Friday, and then this weekend it’ll be back to drilling the fuselage.

Got a late start today, mainly because I stayed up way too late last night. No, I wasn’t partying, I just decided to tinker with panel designs again before bed, which resulted on me being up until about 5 AM. Yes, I lead an exciting life.

Pretty simple task today really, doing the front seat back. There was a little extra work – for whatever reason, one of the two large angle pieces lacked two of the prepunched holes, so I clecoed the two angles together and used the fully-drilled one as a guide to drill the second. Then there was just cleanup of the angles and seat back panel, cutting a hinge section for the bottom of the seat back, and match drilling everything. I primed the large angle pieces, let them dry for a bit, and then riveted the entire assembly together:

Next up will be the rear seat back, which is a fair bit more complex…

Started out this morning by fixing the right longeron. I’d previously marked the location of the canopy rail slot (where the bend line was supposed to be located), so once I removed the rail, I could easily measure between the bend mark and the slot mark to figure out how much I needed to trim off the forward end. I also double-checked the aft bend line to estimate where it would end up after the trim. That bend was actually a bit further aft than the left longeron as well, so the desired trim would move it to be very nicely in line with the left side.

Pulling the longeron was actually simpler than I thought. The instructions say to remove the top ~6” of clecos all the way down the fuse, but the only area where this is really needed is at the forward end, where the longeron has to slip horizontally into the gear tower and firewall angles. Everywhere else, the longeron just drops in vertically, with no obstacles. The fun part was actually making the cut. Fortunately, the door to the garage lines up nicely with the band saw, so I had Josie stand in the kitchen holding the aft end of the longeron while I cut the forward end in the band saw. After I’d polished the cut ends and replaced the longeron, it lined up nicely.

That let me finally move on to drilling. (well, after I’d clecoed the longeron gussets in place) First, the upper longeron gets clamped carefully at the forward end to ensure it’s flush with the engine mount weldment in both axes:

Then, the drilling starts, actually with the lower longeron first. That’s easy since it’s pretty well held in position and there’s no alignment to worry about. Next if the auxiliary longeron, which isn’t really held in position. I drew a centerline on these way back when I started to cleco the forward fuselage together, and you’re suppose to align the line in the prepunched rivet holes, but I couldn’t for the life of me get that line to appear at the forward end. Finally, I figured out that if I removed a few clecos at the forward lower portion of the skin, it’d free the longeron up to be moved a bit. Finally, I was able to drill that.

Then, finally, it was time to work on the upper longeron. I worked my way back to the aft end of the forward side skin (that was the sort of sub-area I was working on), being careful to cleco as I went, back up any flanges that might get pushed out of the way as I drilled, and continually checking the alignment of the longeron. Finally, I went back with reamers and final-drilled all the remaining prepunched holes.

There are quite a few clecos in play up here now:

After a quick break, I got started on the left forward side skin…but I didn’t get very far. On about the sixth hole in the lower longeron, my drill bit caught on a cleco inside the cabin and promptly snapped. Turns out it was the last #30 bit I had around, except for my really long bits. I tried one hole with my 6” bit, but it was stupidly dull – must have been a bit that came with my secondhand tool kit. So that pretty much put a stop to longeron drilling for the weekend. I could possibly have run to Ace Hardware – they do sell numerical drill bits – but I’ve been down that road before and I found those bits to be pretty low-quality. So I’ll just wait to get good bits next week.

That left me with some thinking to do about how to proceed. The following steps are all pretty linear – progressively match drilling the entire fuselage, then ripping everything apart for deburring, dimpling, and eventually final assembly. So there’s not really an obvious place to skip ahead to. Finally, after reading waaay ahead, I found the seat assembly instructions. These seem like fairly independent tasks, so I’ll play with these for the next few days rather than just sitting on my hands.

I took the time to find all the parts for the from and rear seat backs, then clecoed them together just to get a look at the structure. Tomorrow I’ll work on actually dealing with these, including cutting and drilling the piano hinge that will go at the base of each piece. Hopefully there’s enough seat stuff to make a good day’s work tomorrow…

Front seat back: (that’s not a confusing phrase at all)

Rear seat back:

Note that the rear seat is a lot wider than the front one. I’m not quite sure the reason for this – well, the rear seat is as wide as it is because it basically fills the entire fuselage profile and serves as a door to the baggage area – but I dunno why the front seat is so narrow. Anyway, that’s it until tomorrow…

First off, as I expected, removing the stab bars on the tail bulkhead allows for the longerons to fully fit in place. Looking back over the instructions, I think I wasn’t supposed to have those clecoed in place at this point. Oh well, it was easy to remove them, and now the longerons lie nicely in place:

After this, I had to go back and replace all the clecos I removed to facilitate putting the longerons in place, which took a little bit of time. Next, I pulled out the center section bulkhead caps and the cockpit rails and proceeded to clean up all the edges, and then I clecoed those in place. Here’s the left cockpit rail:

The instructions say to slide the longerons until the forward bend line sits in the middle of the notch (visible above) in the cockpit rail. The left longeron is perfectly positioned, but on the right side, the bend line is located about 1/8” aft of the notch with the forward end of the longeron contacting the firewall. The aft bend line also appears to be located a bit further aft than desired, so fixing this issue should be as simple as removing a bit of material from the forward end of the longeron. The longerons have to be trimmed at the aft end eventually anyway (the first photo from today shows the overhang), so I’ve got the extra length to work with.

Still, I figured I’d sleep on it before extracting the longeron and actually cutting the thing. So instead I just did some random tinkering before calling it a night. I set the roll bar in place and cackled a bit, tried to figure out how the center weldment (which will support the front seat back) would attach, and dropped the aft baggage compartment floors in place just to visualize how things would come together. The aft baggage area is actually a fairly decent size:

Tomorrow night I’ve got an EAA chapter meeting, so I guess I’ll get back to work Friday…

OK, not a lot of work tonight really. I finally managed to get the aft bottom skin fully clecoed into place. Next I pulled clecos from the upper portion of all the side skins in preparation for fitting the longerons. Then I pulled the longerons down from overhead storage and tried slipping them in place.

The good news is that the bends appear to be in the right place:

But I can’t really do a true test fit because at the aft end, they interfere with the horizontal stab bars:

I assume that the aft ends of the longerons will be notched or something here. And it occurs to me as I write this that those bars are just clecoed in place, and so I can easily remove them to do a full fitting of the longerons. But now I already quit for the night…well, now I know what to start with next time… 

Just…wow. It’s in the nature of any large project that some things takes far less time than you expect, while others take far more time. Today definitely fell into the latter category. It’s been a light week for the project, but I haven’t been completely slacking – I bought and installed insulation kits for both garage doors, in the hopes of making the garage far more livable. It seemed to work fairly well today – it was still warm out there but better than before.

Anyway, today I kept going with the tailcone fitting. Last time out I’d quit in the middle of trying to attach an assembly of the aft bottom skin and the two aft most bulkheads. Today, I noticed that the bulkheads didn’t fit into the bottom skin very well, so I started by taking care of that problem. A number of the bulkhead flanges needed to be tweaked to fit tightly against the skin:

This is the whole assembly I’m working with here. The skin itself is quite thick, which just makes fitting this that much more fun:

In addition to tweaking those flanges, I massaged the skin itself a bit to tighten the curve. That made it a lot easier to cleco the bulkheads in place, which was good, because I removed and replaced them a couple times while tweaking the flanges. Finally I got that done, and I found that the assembly was much easier to cleco in place on the tailcone.

It was the next task that ended up eating a large portion of my day. The final remaining piece in the tailcone assembly is the larger aft bottom skin; this covers the rest of the lower tailcone, from the center fuselage to the other assembly I was working on. So already, this is a large cumbersome piece. To make matters more fun, it has to fit into a very tight space. Already, at the aft end of the center fuselage, we have the bulkhead, the bottom skins, and the side skins, which have a bend around the lower fuse corner that fits tightly as-is. And now the aft bottom skin has to slide between those skins and the bulkhead.

Getting this done required help from Josie, plus some creative use of boxes to support the aft end of the skin:

We spent the better part of an hour just trying to wrestle this thing vaguely into position. Finally, I was able to get a cleco at the forward end of the skin on the left side, but I could not for the life of me get the right side to slide into place inside the side skin. It would just barely get started and then stop and refuse to move at all. Eventually I figured out that the side skin fits so tightly there that the aft bottom skin was catching on the bulkhead corner and pushing it forward. Some creative work with a long dowel and a hammer removed the distortion from the bulkhead and allowed the skin to slide a little further in…in the process, distorting the bulkhead again. It took a couple more iterations like this to get the skin in vaguely the right place. Actually, we ended up with the skin too far in, which caused way more trouble than it had any right to.

Here I am “gently massaging” that bulkhead to help the skin go in:

Clecoing the thing in place was a battle too. Everything seems to not quite line up perfectly, which means getting clecos into the holes is a ton of work. Here I am trying to beat this thing into submission while the dogs look on:

It all seemed to be going decently until I tried working on the right side. I’d figured that maybe clecoing the left side would help move the right side into proper alignment, but that didn’t happen. I tried about five different things to slide the skin backward again; the result of these was an unmoved skin and a rapidly escalating temper. (At one point I opined that this thing had better be a lot of fun to fly)

Finally, I was able to get the skin into proper alignment by once again using the hammer and some scrap wood to bang on the end of the lower rear longeron and drift the skin aft a bit. Even then, clecoing that skin to the right aft side skin was a battle. I got about 2/3 of the way through that and just decided I’d had enough.

The best part is that I’ll have to do this at least one more time, after match drilling and dimpling. And I’m sure it’ll be even more fun with dimples in place…

Whew. Working in the garage in this heat is taxing. I really don’t think I’m going to be doing much – if any – work out there in the evenings this week. Forecast highs are in the low 100s every day this week.

Anyway, with the tailcone bulkheads all set, today I started prepping other parts for that area. First up were the baggage floor ribs and angles; these just needed to be deburred and match drilled with each other. Next up were the back seat lap belt brackets. I got the main heavy bracket pieces trimmed, deburred and primed with no trouble, then came back later and riveted the assemblies together:

There was a lot of other deburring work as well. The aft deck piece, a couple of small spacer pieces, and best of all, the aft longerons. There are two pairs here; the lower longerons run the entire distance from just behind the back seat to the rearmost bulkhead, while the mid longerons just run about halfway to the tail. These are heavy angle and that, combined with their length, makes it a tedious job to get them deburred. But finally, they were done and set aside, and it was time to start assembling the tail cone itself.

For some reason, I was under the impression the tailcone would be constructed on the bench and then joined to the forward/mid fuse assembly, but instead the pieces are assembled individually in place. First up is the baggage rib/angle assembly. The instructions refer to the “rib assemblies,” which makes me wonder if I’m supposed to have riveted the angles to the ribs yet. But I looked back and at no point did it say to do that, so I’m leaving them clecoed for now. If I get to a point where the cloches are a problem, I’ll look ahead and see if there’s any reason not to rivet.

Anyway, here are the baggage ribs in place. This gives a general idea of the size of the rear baggage compartment. Honestly it’s larger than I was expecting; I figured it would be little cubby suitable for a couple day packs at best, but it’s about 3’ deep and could probably accommodate some duffel bags and light camping gear, assuming weight wasn’t an issue. I forget the baggage floor weight limit…

Next up, each of the aft side skins gets its edges deburred – again, a sort of tedious process just because they’re friggin huge. Once each skin is deburred, the two longerons are clecoed in place, making a nice little semi-sturdy assembly. Then the two assemblies are mated to the back of the cabin area. This is definitely a two-person job: one to hold the aft end of the skin while the other clecos the forward end. Then the tailcone bulkheads are added, giving everything a little bit of structure. Also, the garage is now much more difficult to navigate:

I’d hoped to not have to do any garage rearranging on the near term, but I think I’m going to have to. There’s barely room to get out the garage door, or to walk around behind the tail. And with the fuse assembly sitting on sawhorse, it can’t be easily moved either. I may end up building some kind of rolling cart for this assembly, but even then moving the assembly without damaging anything is going to be a challenge. And it’ll be even more fun when I have the engine hung…guess I’ll just figure that out when the time comes.

I worked a little more after this, trying to assemble the two aft most bulkheads with the small aft bottom skin, but got frustrated. That skin is heavyweight, presumably because it has to support the tailwheel. Getting it to fit to the bulkheads was tough, but I got it done, Then I tried to fit that assembly to the tailcone, and it was just not going well. It was getting late anyway, I was getting tired, and I felt like I was on the verge of getting carried away and breaking something. Better to wait tip another day.

Shame it’s going to be so hot this week. I’m making good progress and I’d like to keep going, but it’s just really unpleasant out there. The air conditioner out there just can’t keep up.