Fuselage

It always feels good to rivet stuff together, after all the prep work involved! But this was no easy task today, as I will explain.

Every time I think I have a better way of doing something, or a more efficient way, look out. I've got to learn that it's probably best to just follow the plans. I thought I could rivet some of the stuff together first, then cleco the whole bulkhead together and it would be easier to handle. So I proceeded to rivet the F-605C end doubler bars onto the F-705B bar that goes across the bottom. Then I thought I would rivet it all to the bottom of the bulkhead. But duh! The rivets that hold the doublers on are supposed to go through all the parts! So I had to drill them all out. This took a lot of time because I didn't want to damage any of the parts by being so careless. I've already ruined enough stuff on this bulkhead.

Several hours later, I had a completed assembly. You can see holes that are left empty for now where other things attach later on. I think the brassy look of the rivets against the gray primer looks cool. I may leave this as is rather than paint over it. I don't know. We'll see.

UPDATE: April 2,2009. I came back to this page almost 5 months later to insert an update and a warning. If you're building your F-705 bulkhead, DO NOT RIVET the top 9 rivets seen above that hold the corner bracket in place on the back of this bulkhead! The thick corner bracket will be in the way of drilling and riveting the forward side skin of the fuselage in place. Just cleco it on for now. It will be riveted after the forward side skins are riveted to the fuselage. I had to spend a lot of time today carefully drilling out 18 rivets to get this corrected. It would have been so much easier to just cleco it on. PAY ATTENTION TO THE PLANS. (I'm still telling myself that on a regular basis) You can see the details and more about this on my page for April 2, 2009.

Next, the snap-bushings were installed and the seatbelt anchors bolted and torqued into place.

With the F-705 finally finished, it feels good to move on and start thinking about the F-706. I pulled all the parts out of inventory for this bulkhead and studied the plans for my next work session. Each bulkhead is getting lighter and less complex as you move further toward the tail of the plane.

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