This
afternoon I riveted the side skin doublers and side skin support angles in
place. The first thing I did was get out
my big shop vac and cleaned up all of the rivets and drill chips from inside of
the fuselage. They were everywhere. After vacuuming up the visible debris in the
interior area I used some duct tape to attach a piece of flexible conduit to
the end of the vacuum hose and vacuumed the debris from the ribs through the
lightening holes. What a process. When I was finished I started to pull the
rivets.
First I installed the skin
support angles with Cherry Max rivets to the mid fuselage channel. I tapped the spar sleeves back to clear the
rivets. I was a real chore to tap them
back into place, but I was able to do so.
I photographed the skin support angles from above. The photos are not to clear, but they show
the angles riveted in place to the channel.
Next I pulled the flush rivets at the bottom
edge of the doublers. All went well.
At this point I pulled the LP4-3 rivets in
the field of the skin doublers.
The last rivets to be pulled were the Cherry
Max rivets attaching the sides to the vertical ribs. All of the rivets for the service bulletin
have been pulled.
I then started to chamfer the corners of the gear
leg hold brackets. I marked the corners
and used my bench grinder to remove the material. It is a long, hot process. I stopped for the evening and will finish
tomorrow.
