Started aft fuselage bulkheads
May 28, 2014 – There’s still a lot of work to do on the house, but because of the nice weather today I decided to reward myself with a little therapy. I started work on the bulkheads for the aft fuselage.
I’ve been wrestling with what to do next after finishing the F705 bulkhead. I kind of wanted to continue on in the center section, but I decided to go with the order in the book, plus, I won’t be able to stay on this without working on the house again, so I decided to do something that could be more or less easily put away.
I pulled out the parts for the three forward bulkheads, clecoing together the obvious…
I located the optional holes for the static tubing and took them up to 7/16″ (piloted and full-size):
…then I enlarged the rudder cable holes to 5/8″:
I fabricated the F728B, 729B and F729C angles. It’s hard cutting a long angle from stock, hoping I selected the correct one, since long angles are needed later…
After putting the F729B angle in place to drill through the F729C angle, I discovered I had very little edge distance. I had made the 729B angle about 1/4″ too short.
So I made another one. Took no time at all.
I had to back-drill the 729C angle through the F730 plate, so I drew a safety line for good edge distance, and clamped the angle in place, then drilled it. You can just see the line through the holes in the picture below:
Then I tried to figure out which holes were getting flush rivets. I neglected to check that last time, resulting in marred paint. I dimpled or countersunk where necessary, and assembled to check the fit.
Here’s the F706 bulkhead, ready to blow apart and paint.
I drilled the suggested holes in F708 to secure the static lines. Measured them out, then clecoed the two halves back to back to make the holes symmetrical.
Time: 3:20