Continued with the bottom skin today, removed all the z- and l-angles and deburred holes, primed and then riveted on the skin.
If you look carefully we didn’t rivet all the way to the ends of the l-angles because we need to be able to slip the longerons underneath them. In retrospect we wished we had left a couple more holes unriveted as it was a bit of a bugger to do when putting the side skins on.
Here’s another view with nut plates and stiffeners riveted, all longeron holes and gussets drilled to a larger size.
That’s it for now with the bottom skin, time to find a side skin to do the same with. The side skins are the same so you just pick one and call whatever side you want it to be. We decided this would be the passenger side one.
The side skins get an extra piece on the end where the horizontal tail is going to rest.
Then we had to pick up another longeron and drill it to the top of the side skin, making sure we drilled it the right way up (though if we had gotten it wrong, I guess this would have then become the left hand side!).
To speed things up we decided to drill most of the holes at size 30 right away, once the longeron was stable on the skin. I don’t think I could have it this way if I had been on my own but with one person holding it steady it was ok to go big on the drill from the beginning.
Each of the four skins is the same, drill holes into the longerons, add some l-angle stiffeners, rivet them on. Here are the l-angles
And here they are on the skin
