Rear Fuselage Bottom Skin Longerons (2.5h)

Next up we have to drill the bottom longerons to the side skins. To do this we hold the side skin up to the bottom skin and cleco it to the HT frames that have been put back on the bottom skin. Then when the side skin fits nicely on the bottom longeron in that area, I drilled three pilot holes and labelled them on the skin and longeron so that we would know later where the skin goes. This seemed like a big job so we got my wife to come over and help. Here she is with my Dad holding the skin in place wishing I would so some work and not take so many photos.

We then repeated this for the other side skin. Once both skins had some pilot holes drilled we removed the longerons from the bottom skin and attached them to the correctside skin bottom and drilled through that skin all the way along the longeron.

Some deburring and priming and the bottom longerons are ready to rivet to the bottom skin.

The bottom skin is now pretty much complete.