Working on finishing up the center section - 7 hours

While I’m waiting on the paint to dry on the new platform I built in the garage. I went to work on the center section to clean up a few outstanding items. One of the items I haven’t addressed is countersunk the F-705 bulkhead for the nutplates (for the removable baggage floors).

I countersunk for nutplates and then I masked off the assembly and spot primed the area. 

Since I had the primer out, I touched up the skin under the forward F-704 bulkhead/spar. 

Next step I need to make sure the aft fuselage is prep’d for the longerons. Reading other build logs. I see that the relief hole for the longerons in the bulkheads need to be enlarged slightly. I have some scrap 3/4x3/4x125 angle so it made adjusting those holes pretty easy. 

I fitted the longerons to the aft fuselage to check fit. 

Like Mike Bullock’s build page. I too had a slight bit too much of Bulkhead F-711 that kept the longerons from sitting flush with the side skin. I will need to trim those down.

I checked the fit at the back and marked the longeron that I purposely left long to be cut right where the rear tab ends. No edge distance issues here! 

Using the method Mike Bullock used. I isolated the F-711 bulkhead from the horizontal stabilizer mount with a plastic scrapper and used a small flat file to remove about 1/32” of material. Worked very well.

 

Next step I wanted to take a good look at the F-710B angle. I haven’t riveted it yet to the bulkhead as I wanted to take a good look at how all this was going to mesh with everything. I cut and shaped the F-710B angle exactly to the dimensions on the plans and then fitted it to the F-710 bulkhead. Looking at other build logs, I see that there can be quite the issue with getting proper edge distance with the AN3 bolt used to mount the horizontal stabilizer. There’s just not much material to work with there. I can get things more snug. I built the F-710B angle to fit between the tabs of the bulkhead but I could have made it longer. I’m about 1/32” to 1/16” short on both sides if I want it tight to the longerons.

I sat and looked at it for a while. Looked at other builds. Scratched my head. I think I’ll post this dilemma to the Van’s Facebook group and see what more experienced eyes say.