bulkhead priming and assembly
This is a BIG batch of parts that I have ready for primer. I spend most of the evening on Saturday washing parts in prep for primer on Sunday. It started getting late and I kept finding more piles of parts that were ready to be washed and primed. I ended up washing parts until after 11pm (way past my bedtime). Oh, yeah, Tanya helped too for a while (she went to bed). I think she may have felt sorry for me. So with all the parts washed and dried overnight, it began raining Sunday morning. This isn’t exactly ideal for priming, but oh well. Knowing that it was going to take a good while to prime all these parts, Tanya and I rolled out pretty early and got to it. With both of us doing our part, I shot primer and Tanya arranged parts on the trays and moved them in and out of the booth, I was in the monkey suit for about three hours. Not too bad, but I was definitely ready to be done. I have included a picture of how I store all of the hose and masks for the forced air breathing system.
Later in the day, with everything cleaned up and the parts dry enough to work with, I started assembly. This is the fun part. It basically amounted to sitting down with the rivet squeezer and the pile of parts and riveting everything together. I had completed all of the sub-assemblies by the end of the day. After a couple of weeks of work, it all goes together in half of a day.
You may notice that I have adjusted the priming process for the fuselage. We are no longer acid etching and Alodining all parts. All parts get a quick wipe with MEK to remove all stamp and layout ink, then they get scuffed with a scotchbrite pad, washed with soapy water, and primed.
