As I have to wait for a partner to rivet the forward fuselage, I decided to work on the floors. There are six of them where the holes need to be drilled out and dimpled. Next time I'll sand and prime them.



On the forward floors a small part has to be fabricated from aluminum sheet, it will hold the stick boot. It makes for good training to open a rectangular hole in a piece of aluminum. Even if the required precision id not very high, it allows to see errors not to be done when making the holes in the instrument panel for example.

Before beginning the reassembly of the forward fuselage, and as there is still good access to the rear fuselage, I decide to install the strobes power pack. It's not as easy as expected as the access to the pop rivets used is very difficult.



Before assembling the fuselage a few parts have to be assembled on the bench, for exemple the firewall gussets.



Also the main bulkhead sides have to be rivetd to the skins as the rivets will be impossible to set once the skin is on the fuselage.



Then all the parts are reassembled . I had some holes to redrill, some dimples that were forgotten and some priming to re-do. Here is the result, now all has to be riveted.

Today was a marathon priming session, all the parts are done. First I had to sand the leftover parts, then degrease everything before priming. Here is the firts batch.



And all the parts during workshop cleaning.

Still sanding all the parts, I have now enough parts to begin the priming but still have to sand the skins and the seatbacks.

Still preparing the parts for priming.
First the skins got dimpled, either manuallay or with the pneumatic squeezer. Then I cleaned the parts taking of labels and marks. I then had time to sans all the angles but still have to do the skins, stiffeners and covers.