Brief Description: Further assembly of forward fuselage
It was too late to set up for another paint session, so I turned my attention to the forward fuselage again. Picture 1 shows the gascolater bracket riveted. This is fine.
Picture 2 shows the fuel flow bracket riveted. You can see I have marked the grey paint, even after 24 hours.
Picture 3 shows one of two cowl brackets in place. I made a terrible mess of these, and had to drill out a couple of solid rivets. Even after this, the centre rivet of both brackets squeezed squint, and I am considering drilling these out too. But not tonight...
Last job was to put sealant on the firewall shelf and attach that and associated nutplates to the lower firewall. I riveted the rudder channel to the firewall shelf, and clecoed the shelf to its mate. At this point I realised I should have mounted the rudder nutplates to the shelf as well as the channel. Not only did I have to drill out all of the nutplates, but I had to remove the shelf to do so. At this point it was covered in very sticky black goo that went everywhere, especially on my new paint :-(
In semi darkness I tried to recover the situation, but made yet another mistake and had to drill out another rivet. At that point I gave up in disgust and went to our daughter's looking for solace. I found it in a bottle of malt whisky...
