Tailcone assembly progress

The next few steps in the tailcone involved trimming the stiffeners and longerons. Their tips are cut at 45 degrees, which left me with 45-degree knife-like sharp edges, that I then had to deburr:
Before (sharp!)
After (smooth)
The longerons get a hole in them (which later will go around the HS attachment bars), and are then bent by 2˚ - the bending was considerable work with the mallet:
Hitting that longeron hard to get it to bend 2˚
Once that's done, the actual assembly begins - I procured the required 38" sawhorses, and attached the bottom skin to the bulkheads:
Tailcone assembly
I added and match-drilled the stiffeners that go just under that skin, then installed the side stiffeners:
Tailcone assembly with left-side stiffeners in place
Added the skins, then match-drilled the side stiffeners:
Side stiffener alignment for drilling
I then added the left-side stiffeners and the last 2 rear bulkheads:
Left side stiffeners in place
and covered them with the left skin:
Left skins in place
Both skins and all rear bulkheads clecoed together
It gets really tight in the back
Next is finishing the drilling of the side stiffeners (which I suspect will make me run out of clecos again) as well as fabricating a few more small parts.

Time lapse:



Total tailcone time: 31.7h

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