After deburring and dimpling the remaining holes in the center bottom skin and F-705 bulkhead, I managed to join the center and aft fuselage sections by myself.
I neglected to install 12 bolts in the forward half of F-704, so I wanted to do that now before access got worse. After inserting the bolt in from the front (so there is still access to buck holes in bottom skin), I used a washer wrench to put the washer on the bolt. These washer wrenches were expensive ($30 for a set of four covering eight sizes), but when you need them, they’re worth every penny.
Getting the nuts on these bolts can be tricky. I’ve seen people construct contraptions of wrenches held by vise-grips with tape on the end to keep the nut in the wrench. This however proved to be the perfect tool. This is basically an adjustable wrench with a vise-grip type clamp attached. You can run the adjustment screw down snug against the nut and then clamp it shut and it squeezes the nut tight, allowing you to start threading the bolt and then torque it down.
My dad bought this for me years ago and it’s come in handy a number of times for stuff like this. I have no idea who makes this or where you can buy it though.
Here are some of the bolts installed (the ones where you can just see the heads, not the nuts). There are twelve bolts total (six each on the left and right).
