Fuselage side skin riveting complete

This Thanksgiving holiday, I'm thankful that section 29 is mostly complete, after 1714 rivets, 130GB of time lapse video and 152h of effort!

We finished riveting the lower fuselage channel (some of the hardest rivets so far), and started up the bulkheads:

Riveted lower fuselage channel

Riveted forward fuselage bulkheads

It was then time to rivet the pilot and copilot floors (except the 9 holes on each side that will attach to the bracket for the EFII pumps):

Porcupine floor before riveting

Riveted right forward cabin floor

Riveted left forward cabin floor
That took just a few blind rivets (actually, 250 of them):

Remains from some of the blind rivets used to attach the floors
In the process, we also found out that the pilot's seat is not very comfortable yet:


Finally, I riveted the forward fuselage ribs:


With this, all riveting is complete (Look ma, no clecos!):



The only step left is attaching the landing gear mount (which involves no riveting, just bolts). Due to (by Vans's advice) having hammered its flange until the flange was in a proper position, it'll need some touching-up:


I sanded off most of the broken powder coating, and will prime that part soon:


Time lapse:



Total fuselage side skin rivets: 1714
Total fuselage side skin time: 152.0h

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