The firewall is the first assembly to build on the fuselage. It is made of stainless steel, and is relatively thin. I used Boelube on every hole during match drilling. The Boelube worked so well, I could hardly tell I was drilling steel. The match drilling is done from the front as the steel is tougher than aluminum and provides a better guide. The two brackets in the center near the bottom were fabricated and then drilled using the existing holes in the firewall. Be sure to get the spacing from the lower angle correct.

Riveting started by squeezing most of the rivets around the sides and bottom. This was accomplished by removing clecos and brackets as necessary to provide access for the squeezer. I then back riveted all of the AD3 rivets, and attempted to back rivet the remaining AD4 rivets without much luck. I only have a 2x gun, and it just doesn't have what it takes to back rivet these. I am able to rivet with a bucking bar, but I may borrow a 3x gun so I can finish via back riveting. It may be time to buy a 3x given the fuselage has a lot more of this size rivet.

There are six bulkheads in the rear section that have some assembly required. There are also quite a few angles and brackets to fabricate. There is literally dozens of pieces to prime. Once the pieces were primed, most of the bulkheads were assembled. Be careful to leave the holes open F706 and 707 as spelled out on the plans.

I am really happy that these are done. It was not as difficult as I had pictured, but I also took my time. A few words of caution, round off all the edges of the jaws in your vice, and crescent wrench before attempting any bends or twists. Even with adding padding to them, I got gouges in the angle that made me replace the angle.  Luckily I have a friend with a quickbuild fuse that had extras from his slow build wings. Also, when using the crescent wrench on the 17 degree twist, place it about 1-2" from the end of the angle to avoid bending the flange itself.

For the long curves, I used a 1/2" spacing between hits per other builders recommendations and they turned out smooth. As you bend the angle, it twists and bends away from the compressed flange. I found that it was fastest to do most of the bend while adding pressure into the bend, and get it 90% before tweaking the errors. As you fix the errors, it will remove some of the bend, so then you repeat the process a second time or third time and you will be done. You can use the crescent wrench to fix any twisting. I used cardboard for the curve template and it worked out okay, but a soft wood would have been better. For some unknown reason, my curve template was around 1/2" short on the marks after the fact. This was noticed by other builders too, so I had to estimate what it should have been and called it a day.

When drilling the aft canopy decks, just note that the first foot or so has no curve. You should use these decks as a final reference to be sure you have the first half of the curve nailed.

Once the bulkheads are complete, the rear section of the fuselage clecoed together for match drilling. Then the usual debur, dimple, edge finish and prime is completed, which takes a while with somewhere around 1000 holes. Then it is re-assembled and riveted together with help. Make sure you drill (#19) and dimple (#8) the clamp holes for the rudder cables before putting it back together to rivet. Also note that 7A builders should open the tie down hole before final assembly too.

I haven't been working on the plane much since our second daughter was born. It has been a big adjustment having a second little one around. Hopefully the adjustment is complete and I can start making more progress now. It has been a few months since I have done anything. 

The pictures above are of the center section being match drilled and riveted together. The riveting went quite well and took two couple hour sessions. Once it was riveted together, the baggage and seat floor skins were match drilled followed up by drilling the outer most seat rib to the assembly.

A note about the corner ribs: Per the plans I trimmed the ends off so they can lay flat on the bottom skin and attach straps are called out for the attach to the bulkheads. The forward straps needed to be wider in the middle than the plans show to provide the proper edge distance to a rivet located there. Oh, don't make the mistake I did and dimple all the holes for the corner ribs just yet. It is going to make it a bit more difficult to match drill the holes with the fwd side skin later.

Wow, this was fun. Probably the most fun I have had on the project in the last year. Seeing the fuselage form feels like great progress. Once the sections were joined, arm rests were drilled and holes were added for the external steps. Then the side skins came off and aft curves were added. Two things to note about those curves, to prevents cracks, edge finish the relief hole with sandpaper before bending and find some angle that is radiused and can be used to clamp the skin in place while you bend. I have seen examples were others had problems with cracks in this area.

I went overboard and added just about every clamp I had before drilling the firewall to the skins. I measured and measured and measured to be sure the entire firewall was the right distance back from the forward edges of the skin. Once I convinced my self it was ready, I added liquid Boelube to the drill bit and drilled the skin to flanges all the way around. That liquid Boelube is awesome. It made drilling the stainless as easy as drilling aluminum. The last picture is of Jadzia sitting above, or below, of F-705 after the firewall was drilled.

The forward section is comprised of a bunch of angles and gussets, some of which are fabricated. It is a little slow going to get the fabricated pieces to fit just right. One thing I learned, which I didn't find out until after I had to work around it, is that I have been marking flanges on the angles incorrectly. This isn't documented, but when drawing a center line down a flange, it is not exactly half the width. It is half of the width minus the thickness of the other flange. So a 1/8" thick 3/4" x 3/4" angle gets a line 5/16" from the edge, not 3/8". It doesn't seem like much of an error, but I had to fix a bunch of little things because I got this wrong. Luckily all the edge distances are still good though.

The forward floor stiffeners also had to have a unique trim added to fit in with the angle on the firewall.

As happens at many points in this project, the next stage is the standard debur, edge finish, dimple/counter sink and prime the parts. There is sure a lot of work in the prep stage at this point. I spent many many hours preparing all the pieces and priming them. It is a bit like Christmas once it is finished though, as now I get to have some fun riveting it all together. Flipping the canoe will be as exciting as finishing a wing.

I also decided to fit the landing gear weldments as best I could while there was access to everything. The holes were added to the floor skin, and F-704 was trimmed accordingly. I did have to file a half circle on the face of the gear weldment to make room for one more rivet on F-704.

The next step was to install all the nutplates on the misc. fuse pieces where required. Then I decided to partially rivet the two corner ribs, and completely rivet the two remaining seat ribs while the assembly was not attached to the rear fuselage.

I riveted the two center floor stiffiners to the firewall and F-704 while the floor skin was off. As you may see in the picture, I also added the lower longer bolts early, but I ended up removing them to get access for riveting once the floor skin was on. There was just not enough room to rivet with them in there.

Well, the largest milestone moment on the fuse has been achieved, and it feels good. The 'canoe' is finally right side up. It took quite a few 1-2hr sessions to plug all the rivets, but they are finished now. The rivets near the tail were save until it was upright, which was a good idea. Thanks to Brendan, Dan, Gary, Jon and my wife for all the help. My back is going to need a week to recover....

The next step was to attach wooden legs via the wing attach and level the plane. As soon as that was done, my first passengers boarded and enjoyed their first of many imaginary flights...

The aft deck is the next significant task. The goal is to remove any twist from the plane and get a level surface at F-710 for the HS. I spent a lot of time checking various parts of the fuse to confirm the entire plane is level. It turns out I had 0.1-0.2 degrees of twist, which was easily compensated by twisting and clamping the aft deck in place. The notches in the aft deck also needed to be filed to give room for the twist.

After riveting some of the gussets to the fuse, it is time to fit the aft top skins and match drill them. The only tricky part here is drilling the F-707B to F-787 and F-707, and that is done with one side of the skins peeled open. I am holding off riveting the side rails for now, as this appears to be a task that can wait.

The steps are pretty straight forward. The hole in the skin is enlarged to fit, and the vertical plate on the steps is bent using whatever means to match the form of the skins. The fit was great all around except the aft bottom side, which has a small gap on both steps. I think the plates would need to be welded differently to avoid this.

The baggage skins are then quite easy to rivet into place. Be sure that nothing is hiding down there before adding the rivets.

The baggage bulkhead is next, and is quite straight forward with plastic blocks added for the shoulder harness cables.

I have some catching up to do on pictures...more pics to follow soon in the remaining sections.

The seat backs are another set of assemblies that appear easier than they turned out. They were not difficult, but there are a few little details that extend the time it takes to build them. The seat floors also require the addition of hinges for connecting the seat backs in a few different positions.

Assembling the flap motor assembly was fun. I love running the motor up and down and actually see something move in the plane.

I had two distinct experiences with these gear mounts. The left went right in, and everything lined up well. On the right, however, I couldn't get the bottom row of wing holes to align well at all. There just wasn't enough room to rotate the mount high enough to align things. It wasn't off by much, as seen in the pictures, so I filed the holes a touch, and used a set of drift pins to coax the assembly into position. All of the wing bolts will go in now, but it is a really tight fit, which may not be a bad thing on a gear mount.

Some notes about the install: it does take quite a few alterations of the hole in the floor to get the mounts in and out easily. The holes opened up a lot more than I expected in order to allow the mount to miss the nutplates on the center section. Also plan on using some sort of jack from underneath to help coax the assembly into position. Definitely make a set of 7/16" drift pins, all with different tapers to allow for progressive adjustments. Just be sure that some are short enough to be used with the bottom holes. Also, do not open the hole in the floor skin for the brake line fitting, until the mount is in place. The center of the punch in the skin was a ways off for me.

I decided it was time to install the control column so that the ailerons could be adjusted when I test fit the wings and drill the rear spars. This is installed in pieces, so don't fall into the trap of putting it all together before installing it in the fuse.

Oh what fun! This was easier than anticipated. I guess all that worrying and triple measuring way back when paid off. The wings just slipped (well maybe a little wiggling) right into place. The next step was to fix any issues with the sweep of the wings, and it was off by about 1/4" forward on both wings. After a little trimming of the wing rear spars to clear a rivet, and the fuselage forward rear wing spar attach bars which made contact with a wing rib, the sweep is within 1/16" everywhere. Van's says 1/2" will do, so I am happy enough.

Drilling that one an only hole was stressful, but not difficult. Just be sure that you account for the fact that the forward fuselage bar is shorter than the rear to be sure you keep the 5/8" center to edge requirement.

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