I closed the office today, New Year's eve and all. It is a good thing, because I still feel like hammered poo poo with the flu. I am only getting a small amount of sleep each night and I wander around the house during the day like a zombie. Mark came home for the holiday because the cable tv was off in his apartment in Auburn. I enlisted him for a short while to help me rivet the nose gear weldment reinforcements to the floor. The method of using proseal and then clecoing everything together until the proseal cures a little worked quite well. The clecoes came out easily and we could remove the excess proseal from the holes by forcing it out with a punch. If I ever have to build fuel tanks again, I will use this two step process (proseal and cleco and then only rivet after the proseal has cured) in the future. The next step is to rivet down the cross brace and the ribs (which are already attached to the belly skin) to the floor. To prepare for that, I mixed up some proseal and slathered it onto the bottom flanges of the belly ribs and the crosspiece. I then clecoed the whole assembly to the floor. Later, when the proseal has cured a little, I will remove the clecoes and rivet everything together.
Here is the belly skin, prosealed to the floor (underneath)
Cross piece with clecoes going through the floor underneath (note proseal on the tips of the clecoes)
