Bill's RV-7

June 3, 2005 - Firewall

June 3, 2005 - Firewall

The fuselage kit with all its parts and thousands of rivets was pretty intimidating. But after organizing the pieces somewhat and looking through the instructions, I feel much better about it. Basically you build the bulkheads first, then hook them together with the longerons, then attach the skins.
The instructions started out having you seaming and fluting ribs and bulkheads, but I'm not ready to get right into drudgery work, so I decided to start with the second item on the instructions -- the firewall. First I found all the firewall reinforcer components, pictured below.

Then I started fashioning the three reinforcer pieces from angle. Here is the single smaller piece. I decided not to buy a band saw to do this. Instead I'll just use my hacksaw and dremel tool. The hacksaw does have the new Rodman Tools blade I bought at Sun 'N Fun. It goes through aluminum much faster than my old one.