Brief Description: Started tailcone skin preparation.
Was supposed to fly this morning but it snowed all day again. Was in the shop 10 to 6 but had a lot of interruptions and a lunch break. Re-squeezed the AD4 rivets on the aft bulkhead. I like them better now. Finished prepping and primed the remaining empennage small parts. Tidied up the shop for the next section. Got all the fuselage skins down off the rack and identified. Cut the blue vinyl off the edges and deburred two skins. Used the edge breaking tool for the first time. Would have really fouled it up had I not printed out the thread about the Cleaveland tool on the VAF site. Even so, it takes some getting used to. If you're not very careful it will either start to wander off the edge, or worse yet the flange will climb up onto the metal. Had both happen a couple of times. Fortunately I started with the bottom skin, so hopefully these little boo-boo's won't show very much. Did an intial pass on both sides of the top skin - I'm sure I will have to do more when it comes time to install it, especially in the rear part. Next comes many hours of tedious skin prep - vinyl removal, deburring edges and a gazillion holes, breaking edges.
The replacement parts for the AST arrived in the mail, so when I can get the skins off the workbench, the stabilator will go back on for aft bulkhead hinge fitting, and AST repair trial assembly.
