Monday, February 7, 2011

Fuselage Moved

The first thing I did tonight after taking a few photos and posting some stuff on VAF to share some of my "wisdom" was to move the fuselage out of the shop. With Section 21 almost done and the structure getting bigger and bigger there just was not enough room in the shop anymore to work comfortably.
The fact that my coaster workbench turned out to be probably too tall was actually helpful in this task today as I was able to just pull the blanket the fuselage was sitting on and pull it onto the coaster workbench and roll it out of the shop.


Now it's sitting in its new spot and is out of the way and yet easily accessible when needed, although outside.


Then I wanted to finish Section 21 and get those 6 screws in the belly skin and I had the fuse already turned on its side, acquired help from my wife and everything - when I realized that we couldn't complete the task due to insufficient tools. The 7/32" nut I have has a center hole that is too small to let the screw pass while the nut would have been on its way towards the skin. I searched everywhere to find a 7/32 wrench but no luck. I even checked the metric wrenches I had, to see if one was coming close but the smallest I had was a 6mm and that was a tad too big to get a grip on the nut. I swear, if I had found a 5mm one, I had filed it wider to get this job done but no such luck again.
I'll have to go to the store tomorrow and get a wrench of that size.

I was so frustrated I just had to continue on Section 22 to work it off ;-). And so I ended up installing 16 nutplates in the tunnel ribs...


... and I riveted the steel angles onto them that support the firewall.


I just realized that this wasn't a very revealing shot as you can't see the steel angle, can you? Hm, I have to fix that issue tomorrow, it's too late to get out to the job again.

Oh, I almost forgot! The cushions arrived today. Antelope and red. Very nice!

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