Underbelly Clecoed

I almost didn't want to do it as I had the Stabilator so nicely wrapped up in paper and stored away but then my German genes took control and made me follow the manual to fit the bulkhead mounting bracket to the Stabilator (or vice versa). It turned out that all the comments in the other blogs about how annoying it is to get those washers in place are correct. Fortunately I had read ahead and knew what was coming, so I didn't try to invent a new way of doing but followed the advice to tack glue the washers in place with some superglue. That worked very well and I was able to determine that except for one place where I needed a -416 washer I can go with the smaller -416L's in all other places. Just like Dave from Schmetterling Aviation I decided to leave the washers glued in place and put the bolts back in so they wouldn't get lost.
Then I couldn't resist to start on the tail cone section and I clecoed the formers to the left bottom skin.



This was very simple and easy to do and didn't take that long, so I added the right bottom skin and connected them.



This wasn't too much work either, so I went on and added the bent bottom corner skin on the left side. This one needed a little attention as the forces where quite high and care had to be taken to not over stress the thin skin.



Turning the sawhorses a bit to get the right side cleared (as seen in the previous picture already) was a snap and on I went to add the right bottom corner skin.



Cleaning up and verified that I have marked the 7" distance from the front edge on every skin as these holes are supposed to stay open. Later I added blue tape on the clecoes in that area to not accidentally remove them.
Guess I'm ready for the riveting some evening this week.



A brief summary of my worked hours on the tail cone so far added up to about 46 hours including the priming and surface prep work.