The forward fuselage consisted of many small parts: stiffeners, angels, bulkhead, landing gear attachments and other small modifications. All fitted great. Following is some pictures showing the progress:
Attaching the firewall turned out to be time consuming. I had to adjust the length of the longerons many time, fit the longerons and re-do. I guess I was pretty conservative in my adjustment of the longerons length, so it took many iterations. After being happy with the fit, I started drilling the fire wall, that took some time and many drill bits, since this is drilling through steel.
We attached the second skin. Then we realized we need to detach both skin to form the bend for the intersection with bottom fuselage. Ah well, we removed both and worked on the bend. We did a bit of digging in this one and we realized that people had issues with cracks forming at the bend. So, we were very careful, sanded the edges very well before starting to bend. The bends went great.
Then we went ahead and drilled the longerons. All went great.
Attaching the mid fuselage to the aft fuselage was tricky, definitely a 2 person job. After many trials, we were able to fit the 2 together.
Afterward, I added lot of support for the fuselage, both below the 704 bulkhead, as Van suggestion, and adding a fourth support at the intersection of the mid and aft fuselage.
Then I added one of the side skins. The fuselage is growing and taking over the garage.
We finished bending the longerons. They both matched the template pretty well. Then we fitted the longerons with the aft fuselage.
Then we attempted attaching the center fuselage. Then fitting turned out to be tricked. So, we decided to leave to next week to take our time to fit and support everything well.
We proceeded with installing the baggage floor in the center fuselage.
Then we tackled bending the longerons. This is turning to be quiet a project to get to good recision, but definitely worth the time.
It took 2 days to rivet the center fuselage together. I am looking forward to attach the center fuselage to the back fuselage and to see the fuselage slowly growing.
We prepped (deburred, dimpled, countersunk), and primed all the part of the center of the fuselage.
We assembled and drilled the mid fuselage. It came together quickly. It is cool to see the Fuselage parts coming together:
Riveted the aft fuselage:
Disassembled the aft fuselage, deburred, dimpled, primed, then assembled it back for riveting and checked alignment again:
Assembled the Aft Fuselage, checked alignment, and drilled:
Assembled and riveted some sub component of the aft fuselage
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