Fuselage - Center Section
Figured out how to dimple the holes in the center of F-776, and primed the seat ribs. I know, I said I wasn't going to prime the inside parts, but the last plane that I owned had corrosion right at this spot, so I decided to go ahead and prime the seat ribs. Of course, that was a 1965 Piper Cherokee that lived outside, and filled-up with 6" of water, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Note, I didn't prime the baggage ribs. You know, Alclad, no scratches, whatever.
 | Before I started working on the center section today, I decided to finally remove the pins from my squeezer and put in bolts. All I could find were these 1/4" stove bolts, so I got to use the Smithy to turn the square bolts into round bolts. These are the three phases of this task: (1) normal stove bolt, (2) rounded bolt, (3) rounded and shortened bolt. |
 | Stove bolt on the left, rounded bolt on the right. Anything to use the Smithy. |
 | Solving the "C-frame can't reach" problem. That's the rod from the C-Frame with a female dimple die. |
 | The other side is a block of wood with the dimple punch. |
 | I went ahead and used the tank dies for this, since the holes were a little shallow. Actually, I wish I had used the tank dies for all of the holes. |
 | Finished-up the outside dimples using the squeezer, making sure not to dimple the 4 countersunk holes along the FWD edge. |
 | Also, remember to not dimple those holes along the sides where F-715 still has to be match-drilled. Oops. Oh well, those 6 holes will be ok. BTW, when do we match-drill F-715? That happens in paragraph 7 of the next section "Assembling the center section." |
 | Oh, oh, it looks like someone has used Scotch-brite to rough-up all of these parts. I thought we weren't going to prime these parts. |
 | We've seen this before. |