Aft Fuselage Assembly July 9 & 10

RV14 Build July 9 & 10

Aft Fuselage

Bill came out the first day to help with the riveting and we really got into a groove! I got a little hung up on the Aft lower skin and tail wheel mount. It was a tight space and just hard to work in. Later the next day this same area became a MUCH bigger issue.

Bill helped me get all the harder to reach rivets!

Now for the latest mistake/ stressor. This is the tail wheel mount and the aft bulkhead. The mount pops out of the rear of the aircraft through that notch on the bottom of the bulkhead. Well after I had riveted it in I noticed that I didn't cut the bulkhead notch big enough and it was rubbing on the weld bead of the tail wheel mount.

I was trying to go for the easier fix and cut the notch larger while everything was in place, like most times that I take this road I ended up causing more damage than I solved and I still had to do the "correct" fix and drill out the bulkhead in front of the rear out and remove the tail wheel mount to paint the areas that the power coating was taken off from my attempts to grind the bulkhead. But it gave me the access to make the notch larger.

 The mount sits down in that opening in the bottom aft skin in the right of the picture.

Larger opening on the left side of the notch.

In the process of drilling out the bulkhead, I was rushing like a dummy, I made the rivet holes larger!

So now the ones that are circled are going to become 1/8 rivets instead of 3/32. I ordered a close quarter dimple die to dimple the skin. Luckily the edge distances are all of to go to the larger rivets. As you can imagine I was feeling VERY low at this moment. The scope and size of the project felt crushing. I decided to rivet the rest of the skin up to the second to last bulkhead to feel like I accomplished something.

Aft fuselage 7.0 Hours