I made the conical bend on the right skin and it came out even better than the one of the left.  I know that it looks like there is a gap between the side skin and the bottom skin, but that’s just because for some reason I already dimpled the bottom skin, and that’s holding the bottom skin away from the side skin.  After the side skin is dimpled and everything is riveted, it will pull together nice and tight.

Next, I clamped the left longeron to the side skin (ensuring that the apex of the angle was flush with the edge of the skin), and match drilled it to the skin.  There are 180 holes here, and since there were no holes in the longerons to start, the holes take much longer to drill.  This was about 1.5 hours to do these holes.  I would do the other side, but that would keep me up until 2 a.m. and I’m already starting to come down with a cold, so I should get some rest.

Notice that the frontmost (lower right in this picture) seven clecos are copper colored.  Those are 1/8″ holes where the skin and longeron attach to the upper engine mount.

Here is the inside of that section.  The instructions specify that the end of the longeron needs to be cut back 3/4″ from the forward end of the skin.  It’s odd that the prior instructions give such precise dimensions, and then this step has you cut it even shorter.  Furthermore, the instructions specify that if you are a little short not to worry about it.

I intentionally left this long now so that I can ensure that I leave sufficient edge distance on the frontmost rivet.

I drilled the armrests to the side skins and F-704 and F-705 (although the fuselage is upside down, I took this picture upside down so this is how the armrests will look from the cabin).  The arm rests need some minor fluting to get the holes to line up in the side skin.  This is unfortunate since this will be seen in the cockpit unless I add upholstery on the side walls.

The armrests are pretty flimsy, and I’ve heard numerous stories about people bending these when passengers get in and out of the plane.  There are several ways to strengthen these, so I’ll almost certainly modify them so they’re stronger.

Where the side skin meets the aft fuselage, this “ear” must be bent into a conic shape.  I first deburred the notch near the tight end of the cone since I’ve heard of several builders getting cracks there while bending.  I then clamped my back-rivet plate along the bend line and drilled a piece of scrap 1/8″ angle to the existing holes.  Afterward, I used the large crescent wrench seen here to create the bend.

Here is the left skin clecoed back in place.  Overall, this turned out pretty well and no cracks!

After rearranging some things in the garage, Jenn came out and gave me a hand joining the center and aft fuselage sections.  I ended up having to remove the baggage floors in order to be able to coerce part of the bottom flange of the baggage ribs to fit over the F-706 bulkhead.  Do yourself a favor and just leave the baggage floors out until you get the bottom skins clecoed together.

Here is what it looks like underneath.  The baggage ribs also cleco to F-706.

It looks like I nailed the downward bends in the longerons.  They perfectly follow the angle on F-704.

The front edge matches up perfectly.

Here’s the other side showing how accurate these bends ended up.

It was very late (after 12:30 am), but I just had to cleco on the side skins to get a feel for how big this thing it.  I ended up having to remove the shim under the tail to get the holes to pull in to alignment, but now everything fits perfectly.

I’m starting to have serious space problems in my garage.  I’m going to have to move my benches around just to be able to walk from one side of this to the other.  Fortunately, my next door neighbor offered to let me store my wings in his garage (tied up to the rafters), so that will free up a ton of space.

I positioned the web of the outboard seat ribs 1/32″ past the end of the seat pans and drilled the top flanges out with #19 near the front (the black cleco near the upper left of the picture) and #30 the rest of the way.  Afterward, I clamped my tungsten bucking bar to the forward end with the tip just hanging over the F-704 side doublers.  This ensures these two parts are perfectly coplanar since the side skin spans this joint.  I then drilled the first hole in the bottom skin to lock in the lateral position of the rib.

The center line that I drew on the bottom flange of this rib was perfectly centered for the entire length of the rib, so I match drilled it to the bottom skin.

Here is the rib fully drilled to the center section.  I then repeated these steps on the left side.

Before the center and aft fuselage sections can be mated, a notch has to be cut in the longerons to allow the vertical bars on F-711 to slip through.  The plans provide dimensions on where to position this aft deck, and the existing slot can be used to mark for the notch.

After drilling the end to just under 3/16″, I used a mini hacksaw to cut out the waste (a regular hacksaw would have required me to remove the aft deck to make the cut).  I then filed the longeron until it exactly matched the cutout in the aft deck and had a perfect 3/16″ radius starting 1/8″ from the outer leg of the longeron.

I then repeated the procedure on the other longeron.  I’ve noticed several builders drilling two 3/32″ holes to define the radius at the end of the notch, but check the plans carefully, the radius is supposed to be 3/32″, so you need a 3/16″ diameter curve at the end of the notch.  I filed this until a 3/16″ drill but nestled into the curve.  I still need to smooth everything out with some scotchbrite, but the aft and center fuselage sections are ready to join.

I finished tweaking the seat ribs today so that all of the holes in the forward seat pans lined up without having to pry the ribs into place.

I fit the right side outer seat rib and match drilled it to F-704.

I clecoed the aft end of the rib in place through the #30 holes (copper colored clecos) and drilled a single hole through the bottom skin (through the center line I previously marked) to define the lateral position of the rib and then match drilled the #12 hole through the bottom rear of the rib (gold colored cleco on the left).  The gold colored cleco sticking out of the side of the rib on the right was just used as a handle to tweak the lateral position of the rib.  I need to flute the center portion of the top of the rib to match the curve in the seat pan, so this still needs to come out again before I’m ready to match drill it to the seat pan.

I didn’t have much time to work on the plane today, but I wanted to get the center section flipped over and put the seat pans and baggage floors in place.  The baggage floors and rear seat pans lined up easily, but the forward seat pans (the ones with the large holes near the front spar for the control sticks) are having issue.  I started fluting the seat ribs near the front end which seems to be helping significantly.  I still have some tweaking to do before these fit nicely, but it’s late and I’m beat.

I spent a little time cleaning up the garage today.  I also decided to flip the tops of my workbenches over.  As you can see, I routinely drill through parts directly into my bench (and frequently cleco parts to the bench).  I also sometimes prime small parts by just laying them on a paper towel and shooting the primer, so the tops also had quite a bit of overspray on them.  Here, you can see that the underside is pristine.

Some builders try to keep the tops of their benches pristine, but I consider these expendable surfaces.  It’s only a few bucks in MDF to restore the top to new condition.

My wife came out and helped me finish up the remaining riveting on the center section. She’s really picked riveting up pretty quickly and hits almost every rivet perfectly the first time now.