Fuselage

The edges of the small tail skin fit inside the big bottom skin and inside the side skins, so the overlap on the exterior surfaces needs to be primed. I had overlooked this before when I was doing all the priming, so it had to be done before clecoing it to the assembly. I masked off the rest of the bottom of the skin and sprayed the overlap edges. Then I finished putting it together with the rest of the assembly and clecoing it all together. Then I got right into some riveting, starting with the very aft end.

Many of these rivets on the very end can be reached with a squeezer, so that's what I did. Then I was looking at the plans and realized I'm not supposed to rivet anything above the upper J-channel at this point. Ooops! The longerons need to be inserted along this upper edge at some point and the skin needs to be able to flex back. Fortunately, there were only a few that I had to drill out. I think I'll leave the upper rivets in the end piece, the F-712, here, though. I don't think this will cause a problem.

I'm very happy with the results here. The tail skin fits nice and tight once riveted in place. The rest of the riveting should be a breeze.

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