Enough is enough

So today was the breaking point in this (relatively) new workshop. Now that we know how we need to work we decided to bite the bullet and use today to organize and rearrange the workshop. After we rearranged the storage location for the wings we were able to move some of the alleged woodworking tools around. (I say alleged because they've cut more aluminum then wood.) That freed up some wall space for us to put up some wall paper (aka sheets of plans). Until now we were losing a workbench to the plans -- what a waste of horizontal work space. Well now the workshop is much better organized and will work for the entire fuselage build.

 

Post clean-up shot #1

Post clean-up shot #2

 

Post clean-up shot #3

There's an awful lot of woodworking for an all metal plane...

Today was a good day in the shop. We spent the morning doing something that we should've done a year ago when we built the 904 bulkheads (that's the place where the wings attach). We had to make some spacers that were precisely 1 17/16". Luckily I bought a planer about 4 years ago. Unluckily, it was still in the box. Once we cut some 3/4" MDF and glued it together we then set about putting the planer together. It was pretty straightforward and I must say that I'm pretty impressed with the Rigid planer (I bought it when I was living in the states and paid about 50% of the price I would've paid in Canada -- who could pass up that deal?!?)

Once that was done I cut the spacer blocks and drilled them out. We'll need them when we bolt the bulkheads together and get them setup for match-drilling.

While I was doing woodwork, Darren was concentrating on cutting some holes and getting the parts setup for the steps. The instructions weren't the best so it took some head scratching and figuring but it's pretty much ready to go.

That's where we ended today but we're going to try to get some more work in on Monday.

 

Rough pieces after being cut out.

 

After final manufacturing.

A close up of some of our work.

 

Scott at work creating the required spacer blocks.

 

The planer

So, we've actually worked since this last post

I thought that I'd put up a little update. We have done some work since the last post. We've match drilled the whole centre fuselage and also worked on manufacturing some attach pieces and modifying some additional ribs. Unfortunately, the pictures pre-match drilling and post-match drilling look almost identical except the clecos have moved one hole. We didn't do any work this last weekend since we decided to take a trip to Hamilton to watch the Riders. We don't want to talk about the game.

Start of center fuselage

Today we started work on the centre fuselage. The first step was cutting some spacers (sounds easy but takes time) and modifying some of the floor ribs to ensure that the controls have sufficient space. After that we did some prep for platenuts and some other general prep work (drilling out for electrical wires, etc). Finally we clecoed the entire assembly together and installed the bottom skin.

The parts laid out prior to starting work for the day.

Darren working on manufacturing one of the spacers. 

The ribs Scott was working on modifying.

Some more of the ribs Scott was working on.

The ribs modified as required, and ready to be cleco'd together.

The spacers Darren was working on.

Scott working on some assembly.

The centre fuselage cleco'd together, and flipped over so the bottom skin could be cleco'd into place.

Aft fuselage riveting finished

Today we finished riveting the aft fuselage. We can't do any further riveting on the aft fuselage until the longerons are installed and the rest of the fuselage is essentially done. This is starting to get big.

Sweltering Heat, And A Little More Work On The Fuselage

It got up into the thirties (Celsius), and the workshop currently has no cooling.  After an hour of replacing a couple of rivets we were not happy with, and adding a few new rivets, we had had enough for the night. 

Some progress was made.

Fuselage Assembly

We finally managed to start on some actual assembly on the fuselage. 

The first skin riveted onto the fuselage.

Starting from the bottom up.

Now we flipped it over, and noticed we didn't cut off quite enough of the plastic.

Ready for some more riveting.

It is a lot easier to rivet these pieces when the fuselage is flipped upside down.