December 7, 2005 - Fuselage |
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I went to bolt the F-704 bulkheads together and my wooden spacers wouldn't fit. They fit great before. What's going on? The nuts for the rib bolts -- that weren't there before -- were getting in the way. So I spent some time sawing on my wooden spacers so they would fit. | ||||||
Problem solved.
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Dan Checkoway's page alerted me that the bulkhead notches might not be
wide enough for the longerons. I checked and sure enough, they
weren't. I needed to widen them, but how?
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I decided to try using this bit in my Dremel tool. I had never used it before but it was perfect for the job. It did leave a rough edge but it was easily smoothed with a circular file and emery cloth. I widened all the bulkhead notches. | ||||||
The instructions call for three saw
horses. I only had the two orange ones, so I had to buy a third.
And even though it was the same brand-type as the others, it was impossible
to adjust it to the same height. So I had to use the Dremel tool &
cutting disk to cut a half-inch off each leg extension.
Then I wondered if the saw horses would be wide enough. And of course, they weren't. So I had to cut some 2 by 4s to the right length and tape them to the saw horses. Finally, things were ready to cleco the thing together. Lynnette helped me; it is not a one person job. First we turned the aft fuse upside down. Then we inserted the left longeron. It slid in OK but I discovered my longeron notches were not wide enough. So I spent another ten minutes widening the notches on both longerons. We got the left longeron in OK and then did the right. |
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