4/10/2007
I started tonight by finishing the drilling of the longerons. I had the forward left side to finish up.
Then I made the F-704L straps that cover the gap from the longerons to the 704 uprights.
Next it was time to get the firewall out from the storage room. I had made a note on my whiteboard long ago to make templates for firewall insulation before the FW gets installed. This will make cutting the insulation to size MUCH easier down the road at some point. So, before I fit this to the fuselage, I made cardboard templates to store away for later use.
With that out of the way, it was time to clamp the FW to the fuselage and longerons.
Then the F-772 forward bottom skin was brought down, and that was cleco'd in place. The second row of rivet holes from the front was matched to the centerline I drew on the angle underneath to drill the two holes on either side where the silver cleco's are located.
The last thing I did tonight was put some 470-4 rivets in the forward skin to longeron rivet holes. This is to keep the firewall in place vertically before it is drilled. Even though it is clamped, it still has enough weight to sag the longerons a bit at this point. These are not set, just resting in the holes (of course, flush rivets will be used here anyway). They actually don't go all the way thru because the holes in the steel FW "fingers" are not drilled yet.
To keep these from falling out, I put some masking tape over them.
At this point, the plans say to take a break. So that's where I called it a night.
2.0 hours