I had already primed the bulkheads, so I only needed to focus on the J-channels and skins. Yes, I said skins. I decided that I would prime the inside of the bottom skins for good measure.
Here is the aft bottom skin and tail-cone skin primed.
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February 3, 2006:
(2.0 hrs.) My father-in-law was coming into town in a week,
so that meant I needed to get the aft fuselage painted if I wanted to
make use of a riveting partner.
I had already primed the bulkheads, so I only needed to focus on the J-channels and skins. Yes, I said skins. I decided that I would prime the inside of the bottom skins for good measure. Here is the aft bottom skin and tail-cone skin primed.
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I had some extra primer mixed up, so I went ahead and primed the rivet lines of the side skins. The blue plastic film made a good painters mask. |
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Next, the whole aft section was cleco'd back together. |
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February 11, 2006: (5.0 hrs.) I turned the aft section on its side to rivet the bottom skins to the bulk-heads. That is Max on the other side of the assembly. |
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Max shot rivets while I bucked from the other side. This configuration worked really well. |
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Here is my youngest son Joshua helping out by placing rivets in the holes to be shot. |
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Next, the assembly was rolled upside down to rivet the side skins. I crawled inside to do the bucking. This worked great for all the rivets except the tail cone sides. Those were riveted last and with the aft fuselage sitting upright. |
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Look here. My mother-in-law even helped out. She placed rivets while Max worked the rivet gun and I bucked. |
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Aft fuselage back upright after riveting... You only rivet up to, and including, the top J-Channel. This allows you to flex the sides skins away to insert the longerons when the time comes. |
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A shot of the outside after riveting. |
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Pealed away the blue plastic film from the inside. |