Fuselage

I'm frustrated lately about not having much time in the shop to work on the plane. I know a lot of others have felt this. There's just so much going on around here, and other things that must get done. My "honey do" list had grown and become critical, so I've been taking care of things around the house that need to be done.But when I do get a little time out here, I try to make the most of it. Any progress is good progress at this point, It keeps thngs moving and keeps my motivation up. Over the last few days, I've been studying the drawings and plans, even if I only have a few minutes, for things that come next, so that I feel like at least I'm doing something each day.

I've been staring at the F-774 top skin whenever I step into my shop, and today I finally found some time to finish painting it. I just want to get this skin done before moving on, so I don't have to come back to it later. It's just the way I prefer to do things.

The aft part of the skin had already been primed with the usual grey SEM that I've been using throughout the project, but the forward curved part will be seen inside the baggage compartment, so it needed a coat of Jet Flex topcoat like the rest of the interior. Working on this reminded me once more that I'm glad I decided to paint the interior parts before riveting them all together. I'm going to let this dry good and solid, then it's ready for dimpling.

While I had painting on my mind, it occurred to me that I forgot to prime the overlap area on the aft fuse lower skins before clecoing the aft top skin on. Also, I realized that there may be some of the blue vinyl lapping up underneath the top skin, even though I trimmed some of it off before I dimpled those skins months ago. I definitely want to take care of these little items before riveting the top skins on, so I decided to take care of it now while it's on my mind. So I got out my soldering iron first. The top skin overlaps the lower skin and makes the perfect guide to run the tip of the soldering iron along the length of the skin. Then, I unclecoed the skin part way up, as seen below. Sure enough, there was anywhere from 1/16" to over an 1/8" of blue vinyl that had been underneath the top skin. So I peeled it off, then scuffed the overlap area and shot some primer on it.

Then I repeated all of this on the other side. As soon as the primer is dry, I'll cleco this skin back down. It's ready to rivet now, but I'm not in any hurry to do that. I like having the option of being able to take this skin off if need be to have easy access to the inside.

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