Friday July 3, 2009
Aft Fuselage Drilling, Deburring, Deblueing (Aft Fuselage)
7.9 Hours

I had today off for Independence Day and I put it to good use working on the plane.

The first order of business was to finish drilling the J-channels into the aft section of the fuselage. It was frustrating and painful, and I took a lot of breaks, but I slowly got things to line up as I drilled and it came out pretty well.

I'm really not sure why I took this picture of the F-711 bulkhead. Maybe it was to remind me to tell you how badly this bulkhead fit.

I flipped the aft fuse over and final drilled all holes, except those that will connect to the longerons and the foreward (F-706) bulkhead.

Finally, I removed the F-712 bulkhead and placed the tail spring mount in place to fine tune the "mouse hole" fit. You can also see the round hole forward of the mouse hole. This has to be drilled out to allow access to the tail spring mount with a socket head, for installing and removing the tail spring.

Finally, I took the whole thing apart and worked on the endless quantity of deburring.

...and deblueing.

I still have to finish deblueing and deburring the side skins in addition to dimpling almost all of these parts. Then they can go back together and we can start riveting the aft fuselage.

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