Apr 26, 2007     Floorboards - (2.5 hours)       Category: Fuselage

After studying the floorboard drawings for a while, I noted that Drawing 29 shows pre-punched holes along the right edge of the F-830 floorboard that will fasten it to the underlying support angle. In reality, these holes are pre-punched in the left edge of the adjacent F-831 skin. It's not a big deal -- I'll just lay the F-831 over the F-830 to drill the holes, instead of the other way around. I can't tell from the drawings which skin will actually go over the other. I'll have to research that a bit.

Drilled the connectors for the fore/aft skins, and drilled the six holes for the nutplates that will actually connect the fore and aft skins in the rear cockpit. Due to a layout mistake last night that I didn't catch this evening, I initially drilled one of the skins in the wrong place. I'm not sure this mistake will even show, but even if it does, it'll be an easy one to cover up because I think it'll be under the rear stick boot.

Spent some time trimming and fitting the floorboard skins into the fuselage. There are several places where I had to trim small notches or remove some material, but after a while, I got the skins to just slip right in and lay down perfectly flat. Most gratifying, though, was the way the screw holes in the skin connectors lined up perfectly. I am really glad I decided to split the skins! The floor is going to be a piece of cake to take in and out of the airplane, if/when I need to.

Fabricated the rear seat mounting hinges and began locating them on the floor. Almost got tripped up by another error on the drawings: Drawing 29 is missing a pre-punched hole on the F-831 floorboard, which initially caused me to mis-mark the mounting holes for the right hinge segment. I caught it before drilling any holes.

Marked floorboards for rivets.

Clecoed the stiffeners to the rear floorboards.

Photo 1: The connector plate I made to connect the fore and aft floorboards in the rear seat.
Photo 2: You've got to file and sand off quite a bit of material so the harness attach point will fit through.
Photo 3: The floorboards and foot wells, fitted to the fuselage for the first time. (Nice alliteration, huh?)