I was hoping today was going to be the last day of prep work before I could begin assembly, but I unfortunately ran into a few snags on the way.
The first thing I did was rivet the F-704H Side Plates to the side skin. You are only supposed to install the rivets around the wing cutout, except for the bottom forward rivet. That one will be installed with a blind rivet later.
Last time I was in the hangar I countersunk the bottom stiffener of the firewall. I shot the this area with paint to cover the exposed metal.
Since the firewall was done with painting, I took off the masking. This was really satisfying.
For some reason the primer is starting to chip around the F-705 bulkhead. I had applied this primer months ago, so I’m not really sure what’s going on here. I decided to do the painful thing, which was removing the primer with acetone/sandpaper and reapplying the primer.
This image shows more pain chipping on the F-705 bulkhead. Correcting this issue was a major pain in the ass.
Since the side skins are going to be sealed to the firewall, the paint around the forward edge of the skin needs to be removed. I taped off the area and removed the paint with acetone and sandpaper.
After pulling away the tape, I noticed some of the acetone leaked under the tape and damaged the paint. This is pretty annoying. I’m going to leave this area as-is for now. I’ll probably try to fix it after the skin gets riveted.
Since I had some paint left over, I primed and painted the upper brace on the the F-705 bulkhead.
I’m annoyed I ran into some painting issues, but I’m really close to starting assembly. There’s just so many little details that need to be closed out.
[<<Prev] [Next>>]