Mar 22, 2023     26-7: Riveting bottom skin - (5.0 hours)       Category: 26: Fuse Ribs

This one is going to take a while. Spent about an hour and a half pre-inserting and taping rivets. Will knock this out a little at a time over the next week.

3/26: my father in law came to town and graciously agreed to help river the bottom skins. We knocked it all out in a few hours. Good day of work.

  Mar 15, 2023     25-7: Priming and dimpling - (7.0 hours)       Category: 26: Fuse Ribs

Prepped and primed the bottom skins and stiffeners. Started dimpling the bottom skins in the DRDT2.

3/16: finished dimpling both bottom skins. Cleared off the bench to set the skeleton upright on it to prepared for dimpling - it's too tall! Measure the width and check against the cradle; it's just the right width to support the rear fuselage upright and a little closer to the ground. It even balances on the flange but I clamped it down for good measure.

Started dimpling the substructure.

3/17: finished dimpling the substructure and the footwell stiffeners. Then fluted the stiffeners. Countersunk the holes in the aft spar and all the holes coincident with tabs. Then the big moment - cleco'd the bottom skins on the frame. That's about as far as I can take this section until I get a riveting partner for the skin.

3/19: well anal retentive me remembered that I planned to put Ekopoxy in the tunnel. So I proceeded to uncleco everything and masked off the tunnel and spar area to overcoat in Ekopoxy.

  Mar 11, 2023     26-5 & 25-6: Rear seat ribs assembly - (10.0 hours)       Category: 26: Fuse Ribs

Got all of the seat ribs and baggage compartment ribs prepped and primed. It was a lot, but now I'm ready to do a lot of assembly.

Built the seat belt attach sub-assemblies. Then I upsized the tooling hole on three of the left ribs for a coax cable for the con antenna I plan to put under the left rear seat.

Then started assembly of the ribs by riveting the flush heads in the outboard seat ribs. The riveted the uprights. Now I had to take a pause and figure out what all needs rivets or countersinks. I feel like they're not very descriptive in this section. Went ahead and cleco'd all all of the seat ribs, the baggage bulkhead and the baggage ribs in place so I could visualize it all.

3/12: started riveting everything together this morning. The rivets down inside the uprights were intimidating but actually got them without too much trouble. Just enough room for the gun and the double offset set to fit down between the bulkheads. All of the rib the rear spar rivets were easy except the inboard tunnel that for whatever reason I struggled with the double offset. Had to drill three out with the 90 degree drill. Recovered ok.

Riveted the step doubler on the outboard baggage floor ribs.

3/13: all this thinking about conduit runs and I almost went too far before drilling holes in the seat ribs. I had already riveted the baggage bulkhead on to the first rib when I stopped myself. I was able to shift ribs around and get a 7/8” step bit between the ribs. To drill enough holes for four conduits. Then installed the remaining rivets from the baggage bulhead to the seat ribs.

Snuck out late and got the baggage floor ribs riveted too. Ready for bottom skins.

  Mar 07, 2023     26-5 thru 26-7: Lots of deburing - (2.0 hours)       Category: 26: Fuse Ribs

Not a lot of big chunks of time to work but a little bit here and there over the past few days got all the remaining parts except the skins deburred. Was hoping to prime one night this week but it looks like rain the next few days.

I did get the outboard seat ribs fluted to follow the contour of the bottom skin. Thought that might be hard but sort of guessed and got pretty close on the first shot.

  Mar 03, 2023     26-2 thru 4: Prime and assembly of seat ribs - (5.5 hours)       Category: 26: Fuse Ribs

Prepped and primed ribs and misc parts for the passenger footwells.

3/4: big day of assembly today. Riveted all the inboard seat ribs together. Then riveted the outboard seat ribs. Cleco'd the seat ribs to the aft center bulkhead and match drilled the #12 holes through the spar. Installed and torqued all of the AN3 bolts throughly the spar. Then riveted the seat ribs to the spar web with a double offset river set. Tough access, but all the rivets came out fine. Looking good.

  Feb 22, 2023     26-2: Starting fuse ribs - (2.5 hours)       Category: 26: Fuse Ribs

Waiting to prime the bulkhead parts so moved on to fuse ribs tonight. Mostly just tooling around with Ben in the shop but we did manage to deburr and countersunk a few parts on the inboard ribs and seat belt attach lugs. I hope this is the beginning of more shop time for Ben.

2/25: just looking forward a few pages and deburring more parts