Finished riveting the fuse and Flipped the Canoe! - 6 hours

 A big day in the garage but hit a major milestone. I started this morning working on the seat back brace, but after lunch I decided to push through the riveting of the fuselage. All that I needed to do was to finish all of the rivets around the F-706 bulkhead. I was really concerned about this area for the bends/curves at the bottom of the fuse. They weren't the easiest, but they went surprisingly well. Managed to get all rivets set extremely well. My head/arms/ body all were contorted in every position to get to these rivets but I did it.

(A huge thank-you to my buddy Mike who was able to help me rivet via Zoom meeting as we are in a pandemic and lock down....without his 'advice' I couldn't have done any of this).

 And now to the milestone!!! I was able to flip the canoe!! Ahh feels so good to reach this point. 

Just in case you were wondering how much time of spent on the project. Total build Hobbs - 2203.5 hours. 

I count my time as "Garage Time" not "Tool Time". So basically from the time I walk into the garage until I leave the garage. This includes setup and cleanup. I typically put all tools away and sweep up after I am done. only on huge jobs do I leave everything out for the next day.

Finished fabricating the F-638 seat back brace - 2.5 hours

I need to drill the holes in the F-638 seat back brace. The plans call for 2 1/4" holes but I don't have that size of hole saw. I do have a 2" hole saw that cuts holes a tad larger....more like 2 1/8". So for me this is good enough. Using scrap MDF as a backer plate. I located the center of the holes and drilled to #40 and clecoed the brace to the MDF. 

 I now have a stable platform to drill the large 2" holes and not have to worry about the pilot bit 'walking'. 

All holes are easily drilled. Next I drew out the dimensions on the ends of the seat brace and cut them according to the plans. Used aviation snips for a rough-cut and then used the sanding station to finish cuts up to the line. Final edge cleaning by 3M wheel.

Finished drilling the F-742 seat floors - 4 hours

 Now that I am set up with the aft seat floor hinges its time to drill. I started placing and drilling the mount holes in the hinges to the aft floors using a #40 bit. Then I opened up the holes to #30 

So, its not till I actually drilled the hinges to the seat floor that I noticed the hinge covers the hole that mounts the seat floor to the seat rib. It scared me at first, but I soon realized that this hole falls right in the middle of the hinge. I drilled this hole out and will allow be to still install the #8 screw to attach the floors to the seat ribs (remember I made my seat floors removable).

 

I finished the build session be opening up the #40 holes in the seat back brace to #30.

 

More work on the seats - 5 hours

 Lots of time was spent carefully measuring the seat bottoms and the hinges that will eventually be riveted to the seat bottoms. First I marked out the dimensions on the seat bottom pans. 

 I then drew centerlines and required dimensions on all of the hinges. Im careful to label all pieces so that once they are drilled, they end up getting riveted onto the correct place/orientation. 

I took a bit of time with drilling the hinges on. The hinge rivet locations come very close to the seat ribs, so I double checked clearances were going to be ok and not interfere with the seat ribs. 

Next step I fitted the hinges onto the F-638 seat back brace. 

Started on the seat backs - 5.5 hours

 Feeling like fabricating and not riveting today😛. I decided to tackle something new. I dug out angles and hinges and cut all of the parts for the seat backs. 

  A groove is required to be cut into the seat back angles to allow the hinge to nest. I've seen lots on the build log use files to do this, but I found that a router works extremely well on aluminum (yes, dulling the bits to no end but its worth it). 

Still have the router out, using a round over bit I put a radius in the angle that crosses the top of the seat back.  

Fabricating trim servo spacer and priming - 3 hours

 One of the items on the to-do-list is to make a spacer for the aileron trim servo. The trim servo doesn't sit flush with the seat rib due to fluting on the rib. So I used some 0.063" scrap and traced the servo. I then transferred the fluting line onto the spacer and trimmed accordingly. Since the spacer does not need be full size, I cut out a portion of the middle to lighten it up.

I cleaned up the edges on the F-656 gussets and primed them.

 

More riveting on the fuselage - 8.5 hours

 Very long day on the build. Progress was slow because lots of the work was really finicky. I managed to get all of the riveting on the F-704 bulkhead that was tricky to reach. I also was able to finish the rivet line on the F-705 bulkhead and the F-724 bulkhead.

 

Feeling like I'm actually progressing, I decided to start bolting the F-633 control column mounts. Getting the washers and nuts on was tricky as there is not much space to work with between the F-704 bulkhead. Washers were ok as I have a tool that I taped to a screw driver....but getting nuts on the bolts was not that much fun. I ended up using tape on the end of a wrench which helps hold the nut in place, enough to get the nut started.

The most difficult part was how to torque the nuts. I have a very small torque wrench however its not that small. I ended up running to the store and bought a 3/8" socket and ground it down shallow enough so that I could get it slipped over the nut and torque it.

Finally, I finished the installation of the two bolts on the F-705 bulkhead. I slipped the F-705H spacers in place and I installed the bolts. Fortunately the fit was really good and installation was smooth.