After a lot days working on the center section, specifically the auxiliary longerons and bulkheads, it is now time to tear down all parts yet again.
The main reason is to cleanup the parts and to prime them. I start by removing the firewall.
With the firewall removed, you can now see all the longerons and stiffeners that were added on the forward side of the center section.
Carefully I’m disassembling the bulkheads and stiffeners.
After those I can also rewove the longerons. You can see all the drilling debris on the bottom skin.
With all the bulkheads, stiffeners, longerons and the bottom skin removed, the construction becomes very fragile again.
Now I have to remove the side skins and that looks like I go back in progress a month of two.
After separating the center section from the tail, I start counter sinking all the parts. so the counter sunk holes are also primed.
It’s kind-of a puzzle what part to dimple or counter sink. The main rules are: don’t counter sink thin materials (e.g. skins) or structural parts (longerons), don’t dimple anything over 0.04″ (because it won’t work). Thus leaves you in some places with a catch 22.
If you can’t counter sink skin and can’t counter sink the longeron, how about the side skin top row on the main longeron?
The trick is that you can counter sink skin if it is covered by another layer of dimpled skin.
So here I’m counter sinking the bottom skin of the center section, because it is covered by the bottom skin of the forward part. You could also counter sink the flange of the main bulkhead, but I don’t like the idea of drilling in the main bulkhead.
I want to create a new workspace for the fuselage, once the tail and center section are riveted together. So I’m moving the tail to the same table next to the center section.
I dimple the extra row of rivets that were drilled with the side skins.
I use an old ladder on my adjustable table and cover it with some MDF plates I had left over.
This creates a strong 4 meter construction that can hold the entire fuselage and makes it real easy to work on it (I hope).
Time: 3 Hours, Rivets: 0/0 (2019-11-20)
Time: 3 Hours, Rivets: 0/0 (2019-11-23)
Time: 3 Hours, Rivets: 0/0 (2019-11-24)
Video
