Still working away...

I have been working on getting all the skins prepped for riveting. This takes a lot of time to debur, dimple and then prime all the skins. I have been at it for about three weeks off and on to get the job done. All but two skins are done and they only need to be primed. After that is done, I will start making some shims for riveting. Even with all the care that is taken to make the skeleton parts fit properly, you need shims to make the skins come out some when they are overlapping another part.
The tail is the worst place as you have a .040 tail cone skin that has to mate up to the side skins. Almost all of the back tail area is shimmed out to have a smooth skin appearance. If you just riveted it all together, it would look really bad. I have seen some jobs where the skins are all puckered. I am not having that on my bird......
A lot of the front fuselage is countersunk for the dimples in the skin due to the thickness of the bulkheads and stringers. I countersunk thousands of holes and had to recharge my drill batteries multiple times. Shavings everywhere......


I will get some pics posted of the progress for priming, then its finally off to some actual progress of putting parts on for good. Once all the skins are on, that fuselage can come out of the jig......yeah!