11/04/2010 - Back to the centre fuselage

Its been a while since I have riveted together a skeleton with some of the larger rivets from the kit.  The squeezer made light work of it for once, with only a few of the trickier positioned ones that required the bucking bar and hammer.

As per the instructions pop rivets were used for the crotch strap anchor points.

All the platenuts from the plans have been installed onto the seating area, but I still have to do the elevator control rod inspection panels.  Some builders have decided to platenut  all of the seating and baggage areas so they can use the space to put equipment or switch gear.  I have opted not to do this at this stage.

There are a number of bolts that require inserting for each of the rib.  These are put here instead of rivets due to the length of rivet required being unpractical to go through web and strengtheners on this bulkhead.

The crazing you can see as I mentioned earlier and so have other builders is due to the cracking of the harder surface coating and not cracks in the aluminium.

With the outside skin clecoed on, I made a start at riveting the baggage ribs to the skin.

I think the paint will need a few touch ups after riveting the skeleton cause at times it was quite awkward to get the gun in place.