Sunday, July 29, 2012

Backdrilling...




Another week gone by and I am pretty excited to get back to work on the plane. I left it last week with the bulk heads clamped in place and the skin haphazardly laid across the back and bungee cord'd down
We laid out some blue tape along the line where the old skin mated for reference, held it in place and started back-drilling the rivets for the turtle deck.
As you can see there inst a lot of room in there. Luckily I am pretty thin but it was still a tight squeeze and very uncomfortable.





There is more room in there with the raised turtle deck. The bulkhead are still only temporarily clamped into place. I will need to make sure that I get a tight fit on them with the turtle deck before drilling them in place to the old bulkheads.




It probably would have helped to remove that cross brace that is part of the baggage compartment floor liner. I used a couple of moving pads to attempt to obtain a flatter surface to lay on. It difficult ter in way that you can get one arm above your head. Then the trick was to back drill as many oles as AI could before my other arm went to sleep beneath me. That was about 3 holes or 60 seconds.



We added cleco's to the longeron as we went and began wrapping the skin around and drilling the bulkheads. While I'm inside Dad manned the wood blocks for me to drill into whilst holding the skin down tightly where it needed to be. Through a slight miss-communication I did barely miss the block and caught his t-shirt in the bit. He screamed and I stopped (I was through the hole and was stopping anyway). He was wound up a few turns and it took a few presses in the opposite direction to get him free. Sorry I didn't get a picture of that one.






That is Mike with the FAA taking  picture of the Data Plate. He is going to be helping me with the paperwork and N number change.



A few last little adjustments and we call it a day. Im happy with the progress we made today and that fact that it appears I am on the slow climb back up to having her in the air again.



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