TopSkins

My neighbor Adriana and I riveted the last topskin on today. We needed some time again to get into a good riveting rythm since it was a while since we did skins, but the work came out really nicely in the end.

Adriana helped today riveting the aft top skin on. I got her to crawl into the aft fuse and lie there on a piece of wood to buck rivets. We had to drill a couple of the -6 rivets out that bend over when bucked, but alltogether not too bad!

Argo our dog thinks we're crazy!

Took the skins off today and deburred, dimpled, cleaned and primed them.

It will take some time until these get riveted, but preparation is done!

I match-drilled the rest of the aft top skin today. I held off drilling the 707 bulkhead holes because it would be better to do that together with the forward top skin on as well. So after clecoing on the rib between the 706 and 707 bulkheads and fabricating the small piece of angle that is riveted to the rib, I cleco'd on the fwd top skin.

When I got closer to the 706 bulkhead I slipped in the gusset as well.

And guess what: I could not line up the skin holes with the bulkhead holes because the stiffeners were an 8th of an inch to long! So I un-clecod the skin again, took the stiffeners out and made them a bit shorter on the scotchbrite wheel. The second time they did fit nicely and the holes lined up. Here are some more pics from the inside of the fuse. This thing starts to look cooler and cooler :-) Notice that I drilled the rib attach bracket to the rib as well. I used a 12 inch #30 drillbit for that.

I also thought of a smart way to rivet the 3 rivets on the tank attach angle: my back-rivet set... And I finally got a chance to use this big back-rivet skin bucking bar! I do need to buy a countersink bit for the bottom screw as none of the ones I own fits in the hole, but that will be for later.

Did I mention that my engine will be delivered tomorrow?

After riveting the side gussets I started to fit the aft top skin on. This took a little bit of pushing and pulling in places, but in the end it fitted nicely.

And here are some more pictures of the fuse. This thing just looks awesome :-)

I did manage to drill the stiffeners to the skin, but will drill the rest tomorrow.