Assembly of fuselage sides, bulkheads, and bottom.
31 Oct 2009. Fuselage bottom, floxed, weighted, taped, and peel-plied. Long day. Chapter 6 is DONE!
29 Oct 2009. Fuselage bottom, glassed! Excellent help, thanks Chris!
29 Oct 2009. Fuselage bottom reinforcements sanded, ready for dry micro in the corners.
28 Oct 2009. Fuselage bottom, reinforcements microed. After cure and sanding, ready to glass!
28 Oct 2009. Fuselage bottom reinforcement foam laid out, ready to micro.
28 Oct 2009. Airbrake cut out of fuselage bottom.
28 Oct 2009. Fuselage bottom jig to maintain proper curvature.
28 Oct 2009. Well, the instrument panel, seat back, seat back brace, and heat duct were ALMOST perfectly aligned with the longeron lower faces, but not quite. About 0.25 inch gap, in some places, unacceptable. So I floxed on foam of the appropriate type at the bottom of the instrument panel, seat back, seat back brace, and heat duct, reinforced with a single ply of BID tape, and then sanded down. Now it is damn near level, or as good as I'm going to get it, whichever comes first.
25 Oct 2009. Fuselage, upside down, showing the front seatback brace and heating channel floxed and taped in place. Almost time to put the bottom on!
25 Oct 2009. Detail showing how the portion of the seatback brace is clamped in place for flox and tape cure. Wood block is hot-glued in place.
25 Oct 2009. Detail showing how heat channel is kept in place for flox and tape cure. Nails provide horizontal registration, block provides vertical registration, sides are exposed for taping.
25 Oct 2009. Front seatback brace and heating channel, ready to install.
24 Oct 2009. Front seatback brace and heating channel, ready to be floxed and taped together.
02 Oct 2009. Front seat back brace foam pieces cut out and 5-minute epoxied together.
02 Oct 2009. Lower firewall floxed in place.
27 Sep 2009. Installation of blind screws in lower half of fire wall. Use router to cut a 1/8" wide 1/6" deep groove in plywood for the wire to set in flox.
26 Sep 2009. Making the blind screws for the aileron and rudder pulleys. Use the Dremel to cut a notch in the screw head, then silver solder a piece of safety wire in the groove.
09 Aug 2009. Fuselage inverted. Ready for permanent firewall lower half. BTW, the little plywood guides below did need to be chiseled off.
06 Aug 2009. Top portion of fwd LG bulkhead floxed and peel-plied. I made little guides out of plywood hotglued to lower portion and sides (not shown), peel-plied so I won't have to chisel them away.
01 Aug 2009. Forward landing gear bulkhead, floxed in place and curing. Eight-inch spacers were temporarily hot-melt glued to the fwd LG bulkhead, positioned using the long 0.25 in drill bit in the pre-drilled 0.25 in hole. Once the fwd LG bulkhead was in place, corners floxed and peel-plied, and supporting blocks placed underneath, the eight-inch spacers were temporarily hot-melt glued to the aft LG bulkhead. After cure I'll remove the spacers and BID tape all the corners.
25 July 2009. Floxed in and peel-plied the aft landing gear bulkhead. Note 5-in spacers hot-glued to temporary firewall.
18 July 2009. F28 bulkhead pinned and floxed in place, with peel-ply to round out the floxed corners.
11 Jul 2009. Bulkheads all taped up and curing. Next steps: add F-28 bulkhead, then make the seatback brace. Definitely it's either a canoe or a crib.
05 July 2009. Fuselage sides floxed to seatback, instrument panel, and F-22 bulkhead, beginning 24-hour cure. Peel ply in floxed corners, in preparation for the BID tape. Note orange come-along tiedowns from Home Depot.
Hey, it is starting to look like the cartoon!
05 July 2009. Sides all level and at the proper height.
05 July 2009. Temporary firewall brace. No, it's not a Mooney.
04 July 2009. Fit the bulkheads up, got the longerons to fit in the temporary firewall, dismantled the fuselage jigs, and built the WL 0.0 jig. Time to enjoy a cold one.
