December 10, 2005 - Forward Fuselage
A good look at the area where the side skin joins the aft skin and bottom skins.  This is before curling the side skin, obviously.
I took the side skins off to curve the aft bottom corners.  The instructions gives you pretty good direction on how to do it.  First I fashioned some aluminum angle and matched drilled it to the skin corner.  Then I clecoed the angle to the skin, with a cleco in every hole.  I clamped the skin to the workbench with some steel angle.  Then all you do is attach a vise grip to the aft end of the angle and push with your thumb on the forward end and curve the thing. 
After curling the skins, I turned my attention to the corner ribs.  I finally understand what the purpose of the "attach straps" is for.  I had made them previously but then ruined them by drilling holes in the wrong location.  So I had to make some new ones.  No big deal. 

All the "straps" do is connect the corner rib to the forward and aft bulkhead flanges. 

Then I had to trim the forward end of the corner ribs.  I used my trusty Dremel tool. 
I clecoed the corner ribs in place with the attach straps, then put the side skins back on.  The key to clecoing the side skins to the F-706 bulkhead is to cleco them from the inside of the fuselage.  It's difficult to cleco them from the outside because the F-706 bulkhead flange moves and you can't see it. 

Amazingly, my skin curls came out very nicely.  Almost like I knew what I was doing!
Then it was time to drill the longerons, starting from the tailcone and working forward.  There are a lot of holes, and I'm drilling through 1/8" aluminum angle, so it got a little tedious. 
Must  ... keep  ...  drilling....
The right side longerons are drilled.  Look at all those clecos.  And there is only one cleco for every four holes.  Do the math. 
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