I needed to make some progress on the airplane since it has been a long time since I did anything impactful! I decided to go ahead and start riveting the skins on. I have been waiting on the Grove gear to get here and that should be coming in about two weeks (based on my last call). The front skins fit over the middle skins so I figured I could work my way from the middle skins back to the rear of the fuselage while waiting. Then, when the Grove gear arrives I will be able to fit the brake line / fittings and then I can rivet the front skins on and close up the front cockpit.
So – using the pneumatic squeezer, I began squeezing the rivets in the upper longeron along the top of the middle skins. It sure is nice to use the squeezer as it does such a nice job on the longerons…as long as you have the longeron yoke which clears the longeron angle. Which I do - sweet.
I had a little confusion about the directions - where it says you have shouldn't rivet the rear armrest until the armrest is riveted to the bulkhead. Well, there is one rivet on the aft mid skin that needs to be driven before the armrest can be rivetted to the bulkhead or else you can't get a bucking bar on the rivet. On the right side armrest, I had only riveted the inside rivet to bulkhead/armrest when I realized the issue.. With only one rivet driven, I was able to swing the right armrest up and out of the way to rivet the skin in place. Then I drove the other rivet and all was good. With the left armrest I had to drill out one of the 2 driven rivets - to be able to swing the armrest like on the right side. There is not much room over there and I ended up goofing the hole when I drilled it - so I had to go up a size to a 3/16" rivet. That armrest is in good now! That was goof #1 for the day...goof # 2 was bigger - but wasn't part of N223GT.
