Time: 6 hours
I finished up the left lower longeron today by removing it and Deburring all the holes and edges. I also deburred the holes in the lower skin and weldements where I had drilled through. One last task before reinstalling the longeron to continue the build was to round over the last 2″ of the aft end of the longeron. This is done so the skin that starts to roll up here makes a nice transition and doesn’t have a sharp corner.
I marked off the section and hit the scotch-brite wheel and made the transition.
I put that longeron back in place with clecko’s and the temporary bolts in the forward section. I also put the 2 flush screws in place at the gear tower weldement. When I was done with that I repeated the entire process on the right side with nice results. I then grabbed the spacer that goes between the gear tower weldement and the gear tower plate and deburred both the left and right one. I also reamed all the 1/8″ holes in the gear weldement to clean out all the powder coating. I then placed the aux longeron, spacer and plate in position on the left side. You clecko from the inside to make it easier to put the skins on for fitting. I repeated the process for the right side but had an issue. When everything was in place the aft end of the longeron was almost a 1/4″ higher than the gusset it will be riveted to.
After discussions with my buddy Glen we decided that it was the spacer that was preventing the longeron from settling where it needed to be. My guess is that the weldement is off just a little and it’s tweaking it a little. So my fix was to shave off a little of the spacer so the longeron could slide down as needed. I made several small attempts at this until I got it just right and the fit was good.
After match drilling a few holes on the mid-braces I separated the center section from the forward section and cleaned up all the mess.
The next step in the plans are to build out the walls of the seat section including the skins, vertical bulkheads and arm rests. I took some time and located all the parts for this section.
That’s where I called it a day as all those parts need deburring which I will get to in the next couple days. Another good day and Fall is playing nice with beautiful weather.
