Section 21 Almost Finished

Another very long day at the factory. In the morning I did the prep and prime of the parts for Section 22 and got to use my new HF HVLP spray gun. All the time before I had used the HVLP Automotive Spray Gun Kit that comes with a big gun and a detail gun. I had fairly good results with the detailer but never got really happy with the big gun and so I gave it another try when the #66222 was on sale. Boy, what a difference! This gun is very nicely manufactured and shows a lot of attention to detail, can you believe it? This thing is great and produces a wonderfully fine mist at a record low pressure where the other gun would just spatter.


It comes with a 1.4mm jet and the only problem I see with that is that there's no other size available if need ever be. With the Stewart primer this works like a charm so far and so I won't complain. It just retired the Automotive HVLP kit for good.

This is what I got done by a little after noon.


Then I got back to Section 21 and the forward bulkhead. I riveted the bulkhead onto the angles, the ribs and the side skins and put the snap bushings in.


The next step was to close up that step floor and that always gets me a bit excited as it would be hard to get back inside, so I vacuumed the last shavings out and took a few photos to remember how it looks in there if need be.


The floors were clecoed on and rivets were seated on both sides.


Riveting started and it went pretty well until ....
... Super Bowl XLV was calling and I had to take a break.


Great game so far and my Packers are leading comfortably at the end of the second quarter. As those Green Eyed Lemons took over to mess up the halftime show, I got another session in the shop, just as well.


And just when I thought this is almost too easy I ran into one of Van's practical jokes. That was when they have you install the last two nutplates by "reaching through the lightening hole and holding the nutplate in position" or something like that. The practical joke here is that probably only an 8 year old might have hands small enough to actually reach through that hole. In lack of an 8 year old at hand, I used a little magnet taped to my finger tip holding the nutplate so I could reach through that hole with a finger (and almost no sensitivity, very funny!).


That worked well enough to catch one of the attach holes with a cleco and allowed me to fiddle with it while the cleco held it in place. 10 minutes for two nutplates, not too bad given the circumstances.

That ended the work on the front and the next step made me work on the tail section of the fuselage.
Installing another (short) bulkhead along with the brackets for the second autopilot servo was the task. Here's the result.


Then the fuel pump support got match-drilled and riveted to the rear tunnel. The rivets have to get pulled from the belly which is a bit awkward when you have a fuselage sitting on a table instead of sawhorses. I was able to pull the fuse back enough to get to the belly and pull those 4 rivets though.


The last step in section 21 is to install 6 screws in the forward tunnel that go in from the belly again and they are held with those tight metal lock nuts on the inside of the skin. I remember reading about these screws in Dave's blog and that means there was something mean about them. That's definitely not task for one person alone and certainly not something for this late hour, so I'm holding off on that until I can recruit a helper.
Instead I pulled some more parts for section 23 (the dreaded Longeron Section) that need preparation for priming and interior paint. I'm a helpless optimist to even think about this before bending the longerons, I know.


On another note: I am now only a single digit number away from reaching the 500-hours-worked mark in my log.