Finished riveting and tipped the canoe
By the end of the weekend, Tanya and I finally finished riveting the forward fuselage. That was a lot of rivets to say the least. Just to recap, all of the fuselage final assembly and riveting has been done upside down on saw horses with me up inside bucking and Tanya outside with the rivet gun. So, we’ve been looking at the bottom of this thing for a very long time and is how it is burned in our mind at this point. Now that all of the riveting is done from firewall to tail, except for some specific longeron rivets that must be left open for attachment of the top skins, it is time to turn the fuselage over, otherwise known as “tipping the canoe”. Keep in mind that it is now a full length airplane that is starting to get a bit heavy. So after I did some final checks to be sure I had done everything I could while it was upside down (easier to work on), I gave David (RV7 builder) a call for some additional muscle to turn the fuselage right side up.
After a little while talking about some assembly details (David is currently working on the center section on his plane) we pretty much just grabbed the thing and turned it over. No big deal. I had already cut down the forward saw horse so it sits in a lower position (center spar approx. 16″ off the floor). So, here it is, right side up for the first time, and hopefully upside down for the last time ever. This is like the birth of the next phase of the project and as such is very exciting.
