Riveting the front turtle deck

Since the panel is mostly in, we decided to go ahead and rivet the front turtle deck. There were a bunch of things that needed to be taken care off before actually riveting the skin. First, we got the cowl hinges aligned and positioned. That took a bunch of time. I spent a bunch of time fitting the skin, drilling and de-burring all the holes (5 hrs)!

 

Here is the shiny clecoed skin:



 

 

Another shot! The skin on makes the build pretty exciting now. With this riveted on a majority of the airframe work is done:

 



 

We pretty much spent the entire day riveting. Some rivets were hand squeezed, while a majority of them were driven.

 

I had to lay down head first in the fuselage to get some bucking access. Not very fun due to the tight spaces. I am glad its over! Here is the snapshot of how we did it!

Almost done! The skin is shiny! It was well worth our more than 8 hours of hard work!