I started around 10am setting up the bench to do the prep work in the sun and escape the still a bit frosty temperatures doing so. I didn't want to start the prep too early so I'd have good temperature for drying the priming quickly and so I started unwrapping the flaperon skin to do my mandatory deburring on the skin and get it ready for riveting.
When unpacking it, despite the paper not showing any crack or tear, I immediately noticed that something wasn't right. The area where the skin is supposed to get connected to the inner flaperon skin was bent in an odd way.
And that wasn't the only problem as I found out after removing the vinyl. With seamers I was able to bend the connection backplate back to its original shape and as it will sit underneath the inner skin, I think it won't be possible to see it or pose a problem.
Both sides turned out to be ok.
But there was more, as I already said. Looking along the trailing edge of the lower part of the skin you could see slight pinches in the skin. I mark them for better visibility.
3 spots of slightly over stressed areas, just minimal enough to accept it for me. It looks like the trailing edge got pinched a little by the force of fingers. I told myself that I won't accept it if I bend the skin to shape I can still tell them from what I've done to the trailing edge. This wasn't the case, so I went on and deburred the whole thing to get it ready for assembly.
By the end of that step time was up to get the prep work going to be able to spray later in the afternoon to get the peak temperature.
That all went well and at around 3pm I had all the parts for the next steps covered with primer.
As there still was some daylight left and the day was nice and warm I decided to fix a problem I had discovered with the center section. I had misread where the wings would go and which part of the section would be plainly visible and so I made the wrong choice to not prime the U-shaped area of it. I thought the wing spars would cover this area. Now I had just learned that this area will in fact be exposed and the landing gear will sit right underneath it. The wing spars will go just in front if the U-shaped section and would like to paint the U eventually.
As the fuselage is still light enough to get carried around easily now is a good time to fix the primer problem and so I did this as well.
This leaves only one area unprimed yet which is the tunnel for the landing gear right underneath the U and the reason is that today I shot the one component primer from Stewart Systems and for the tunnel I want to have the epoxy primer as a fuel leak would drain right through this tunnel. No big deal, as I have done all the spraying work I had intended to do on the weekend I can easily shot the epoxy primer on Saturday and finish the fuselage priming off.
I closed the shop at 6pm, quite a long day but a lot of fun - again. And when I closed the door I saw the stack of parts waiting for me next time I get there:
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