Fuselage - Center Section

2005-10-16 - Joining the rear and center fuselage Assys. (3.0 Hrs).

This is the best time of the year to build in Austin, but unfortunately, I hurt my back again last Sunday, so I have been out of commission for the last week. All I did was reach down and pick-up a 2lb puppy. My back was better yesterday, but I had to puppy-sit, so nothing got done on the project. It's a shame to waste this good weather.

I am still having problems with space in the garage, so I am having to look at other options. I am planning on building an extention onto the front of the garage, which has my wife all upset. Just looking at what it will take to do the extention is cutting into my building time, but I have to do something. I can hardly get around the fuselage to work on it, and my wings sitting out in the elements is unacceptable.

I still managed to get some work in on the project today. I cut the holes for the steps, match-drilled the F-720 arm rests, and did the conical bend for the left F-770 side skin.

I cut the hole for the left step. I hope that's the right place.
It was.
The left F-720 arm rest is cleco'd on and the outside is match-drilled.
F-720L from the inside. We have two holes that need to be drilled here.
The front hole has to be drilled through the F-704 AFT bulkhead. Unfortunately, it's too tight to get a drill in here, so all we can do is mark F-704 through the hole in F-720.
Same thing for the hole in the AFT end of F-720 that needs to be drilled into F-705.
Once the side skin is off, we can remove the arm rest, drill the holes that we marked, cleco the arm rest back on, and match-drill the holes in the bulkheads.
Drilling the scrap piece of .125 so we can do the conical bend. Note, that this piece of scrap is from the longerons, and it is a little short. We'll see how it works out.
Clamped and ready to bend, or so I thought.
First step--remove the clecos and put them on the other side; otherwise, we can't bend the skin. Now, we are ready to bend.
Half-way through the bend, I heard a pop. It was the forward cleco pulling out of the skin. I figured with the angle under the skin, I would not damage the skin with the vice grips, but, obviously, this did not work. So, I moved the angle to the other side of the skin, and wrapped the jaws of the vice grips with tape.
That's better.
The results were pathetic!
You know, with a few more clecos, it's really not that bad.
I bent the skin a little more by hand, and cleco'd everything back together, and it looks pretty good to me. Enough for today. I had to crawl under the fuselage about a dozen times, so I guess my back is better, but it is still a pain.