Now that the primer has had a day to cure. I started in on riveting. First piece was to rivet nutplates onto the F-684 gussets and then rivet the gussets to the firewall. Admittedly I didn't get all of the rivets pointed the same direction as after the first three, I then noticed I didn't have enough clearance to get the squeezer in there. Oh well, not a big deal at all and nobody is ever going to look at it.
Another big day of priming. I touched up some of the pieces I didn't get good enough yesterday and then I primed the floor skin and the side skins. I am absolutely chemical-ed out!
Ready to start priming and it was a huge day. For the cockpit I had decided to change things up and go with a 2-part epoxy primer. No doubt the cockpit is going to take a lot of abuse so why not toughen things up. The prep was extremely long. Wash, scrub, acid etch, so on
More dimpling work on various parts. I focused on finishing up the dimpling for the F-796 shims and the F-902 bulkhead. After a bit of research that the F-770 side skin, the F-902 bulkhead and the thinnest F-796 shim (0.032") is dimpled, while the thickest F-796 shim (0.063") is countersunk. This allows the F-796B reinforcement angle to sit nicely in place.....no need to countersink the angle.
This is actually a number of small sessions from Nov 1st through the 4th. Lots and lots of edge breaking and deburring. Super boring.
Before I started to drill the pitot/wiring hole in the side skin. I noticed that the hole I made in the F-715 seat rib (using the tooling hole) does not line up with the pilot hole in the F-770 side skin. I did some research on this and looks like I am not the only one who has done this. (Wirejock has done it as well).I decided to use the hole i made in the seat rib as a guide and ignore the pilot hole in the side skin.
Short build day today, been occupied with a million other things.
I finished installing all of the rivets in the F-706 bulkhead.
