Friday, December 27, 2013

One step back and two steps forward

I know I goofed up the title but its more appropriate to tonight's blog post.  First the one step back part. Yesterday I was feeling pretty good about getting a few smaller tasks complete and moving on to the baggage compartment work.  As I was placing the back wall in place I noticed that it wasn't fitting snugly up against the bulkhead.  Hmmm, what now I think.  Yep, I put the wrong rivets in several locations (see pictures below).  I had put the 470 rivets (round head) into holes that were suppose to be dimpled and riveted with the 426 rivets (flush head).  So today I started by removing those rivets and doing a little dimpling and re-riveting.

Now for the two steps forward.  I managed to get both steps drilled, fitted and ready for primer.  That was a job that I was not looking forward to.  One interesting note about the passenger side step is that I took the advice of my friend Jeff and had a small plate welded onto the back side of the vertical part.  It seems that there have been numerous failures due to cracking.  If you look at the pictures you will see what I mean.

One more thing, I started the design process for my panel and center console.  Last pic shows the results so far.

This is what the original back side looks like.  This happens to be the pilot side step.
And here is the passenger side step with a small plate TIG welded on.

Those nice flat rivets are the ones I had to replace on this bulkhead.
And those nice flat rivets needed replacing as well (same on the other side).
Here is the pilot side step cleco'd on.  No pictures of the passenger side yet.


Here is the beginnings of my panel and center console.  Most of the stuff I will have for starters is here but there is still lots of work to do on this diagram.  This is done with Google Sketch-up by the way.