Sunday, October 20, 2013

Finally a whole weekend of work!

Yep, I got to work the whole weekend, or at least as much of it as my desk bound body could handle.  That equates to about 24 hours of pure airplane building bliss!  Now you would think that after a whole weekend I would have at least two to three weeks worth of progress to show wouldn't ya?  Hah!  I did make progress but not yet ready to hand the engine or anything.  The bulk of this weekend was taken up with deburring, dimpling and priming of the tail cone parts.  I know I said I wasn't going to prime any skins but I decided that I wanted some practice using my HVLP gun on large flat surfaces and that epoxy primer is so cool!  The final result was acceptable for a priming job but I will definitely have to have a bug/debris free area when and if I decide that I am going to paint.  The good news is there were no runs!

I did get a chance to be creative today.  Its time to start riveting my tail cone together and I didn't have any rivet helpers handy.  My normal victims are either at school, at work, or doing homework!  Sheesh, you think they would have better priorities.  So since I didn't have any help I decided to do the bottom to side rivets using my back rivet tool and a custom made block with a 9 degree wedge.  See the pics below.

I am traveling again this week so not much is going to get done for a day or two unless I can talk Amy into doing it....hmmm, nope no work will get done.


Tail cone right side after priming.

Tail cone bottom skin after priming

J-stringers sittin' in the sun drying.

Here is my creative little back riveting jig.  It really worked well.  If I were to do this again (and I would), I think I would elevate the tail cone another 4 inches or so from the garage floor.  It was a little hard to get the cleco's out and the rivets in at this height.

Here the tail cone is all put together and the bottom/side skins riveted together.