Assemling the fuselage^4h

Not much to show, but a lot of progress!

First, I drilled the right longeron to the skins. For the forward 7 holes that attach to the engine mount, I used the following procedure. At first, I wanted to use an alignment tool from this topic on VAF.

However, I was not able to fit the tool in a satisfactory manner. Instead, I used brass tubing that fits into the #30 hole with the inner hole that the #40 drill bit can come through. Then I started drilling the hole from both sides. The idea is that if holes are slightly misaligned, the drill bit will bias towards the output hole. This would create a somewhat crooked tunnel between the two holes which I can then clean with the #30 drill bit.

It worked okay in the end, all the holes in the skin, the longeron, and the engine mount look clean.

Then I proceeded with a random "laundry list" of tasks. Installed the nutplates on the F-902 bulkhead, riveted the F-902 bulkhead to the F-7101 gear attach web, riveted the F-719B attach clip to the firewall, riveted the F-684 gusset to the firewall.

I also riveted the two central floor stiffeners to the firewall angle F-602 and the F-783B cover support rib.

There is one rivet that is kind of hard to reach.

Not sure what the plan is. For the double offset rivet set, I would need to remove the bolt. Another alternative is to put a pull rivet in that hole.

I put both of the skins and now the next step is to prepare the right longeron for installation.