Brief Description: Match drilled landing gear boxes & built table
The first task in the shop today was to match drill the two landing gear boxes. This included all the 1/8" and #12 holes as well as the drilling and countersinking of various nutplate mounting holes. There was also a hole in the left and right bulkheads requiring a flush rivet under a bracket to be mounted later. The plans called out only one rivet to be flush but I countersunk three on each bulkhead to avoid interference with the universal head rivet set to be used when attaching the bracket.
It occurred to me that additional table space would be very useful while assembling the various fuselage subassemblies. The prepunched kit is going together somewhat differently then the earlier non-punched version so I am not sure yet how useful the jig will be. For now, I decided to convert it to a temporary long workbench. I took the two sheets of plywood from the fuselage shipping crate and ripped them on the tablesaw to 32". I then added three 2x4 temporary crossmembers to the jig and fastened the plywood down with some drywall screws. One of the plywood sheets had to be shortened a bit with a circular saw. I now have almost 16' of additional table space (you can never have too much) that can be very quickly converted back to a jig if and when necessary.
Today was a particularly nice break from the hot and humid Ohio summer, so I decided to pull the Archer out and fly over to New Philadelphia (PHD) for dinner. It was a beautiful evening!
