10/14/2007
This morning, I started by priming the parts of the roll bar. When those were dry, about 4 minutes later, I started riveting parts together. The front half is first because it uses solid rivets, while the rear is finished with pulled rivets. First, I riveted the F-631E plate to join the two front halves, then I riveted the top and bottom straps.
Before the rear halves are riveted to the front, the rear 631E plate and an angle on the outside are riveted with solids.
The rear half is then slid over the straps, and riveted with CS-4-4's. I'm not sure why, but I am really quite proud of this part! It was fun to build, and came out pretty descent!
It will get painted before it goes in place for the last time.
Next I started on the install process. There are a couple of angles that get clamped to the roll bar in order to drill a couple of holes for "keeper rivets" to keep the angles in their proper place.
The rivets are long -8's, and are too long if they were structural. Since they are not, I just smashed 'em down, and they'll do.
Then I located the angle attach brackets to the fuselage with the roll bar used to get the side spacing properly. Funny thing...the roll bar is EXACTLY the dimension called out in the plans, but it left the spacing about 1/8" short on each side. You can see the space in the picture below. The yellow arrow indicates where the angle should be sticking out past the skin (and filed later), and red arrow is where the angle should line up with the skin. Didn't happen, and there is nothing I can do about it. I measured the width of the fuselage, and it seemed like a perfect fit for the plan's dimensions. Apparently not.
My solution for this is simple. A spacer was made to fit in the space that will allow the skin to sit flush against the bracket. As far as the canopy fit goes...well, I plan to use Sikaflex to "glue" the canopy on, so this won't be an issue. I'll just use some "filler" glue to fill that 1/8" gap down the road.
Those spacers were a PITA to make, but they turned out really nice, and you can see the gap is minimal...though I do think this would be somewhat of a problem if I were going to attach the canopy rear glass in the traditional way with screws.
5.25 hours