A few weeks ago, my Dad and me riveted the most aft top skin to the Fuselage. Today we continue with the Aft Top Skin just before that one.
I clecoed the skin to the bulkheads and stringers and just like the previous aft top skin, we start at one side to enable working from the other side.
This strategy worked fine for the previous most aft top skin, but turned out useless for this one.
The goal of this strategy is preventing having to crouch into the tail cone. However with this second top skin it’s impossible to reach the rivets and in the end you have to crawl in anyway.
Turned out I also made a mistake riveting the attach angle to the top rib and the aft bulkhead. The manual clearly stated to keep it clecoed, but just before placing the skin I thought it was due time to rivet it.
Turns out it wasn’t!
After riveting the skin to the left longeron, we can safely route the static air forward.
Continuing riveting the aft top skin to the bulkheads.
The forward bulkhead just fits. It requires a little fluting.
And there I found the reason why I should have had the angle clecoed. There is no way we can reach the rivet of the skin with the bucking bar. Only solution is to crawl in, drill out the rivet and reset it. That takes at least 15 minutes.
Oh well it turns out I had to crawl in anyway to rivet the right longeron. So we continued and did both in one swoop.
And this is why you don’t want to crawl into a tail cone. It’s really small, very uncomfortable and it’s easy to break stuff.
Last few rivets in the right longeron and then I can crawl out again.
Time: 4 Hours, Rivets: 46/0 (2020-03-07)
Time: 5 Hours, Rivets: 241/3 (2020-03-08)
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