I clecoed the center fuselage skeleton together...
...and riveted it together. I squeezed as many rivets as possible with the pneumatic squeezer, and the rest I shot and bucked. The forward rivets on the top flanges get countersunk into the bulkhead flange as shown.
I finally finished dimpling the center bottom skin.
Here it is, clecoed in place. Notice that I've got a little portable heater under this contraption. I found that everything lines up a heck of a lot better when warm. The theory is that if you cleco and rivet with the skin warm, when it cools it "shrinks" slightly and stays tighter than it otherwise would. In this case, I needed to heat the skin to get everything to line back up properly since I had drilled it when it was much warmer out than it is now. You know, metallic properties of thermal expansion, yadda yadda.
Tomorrow I have a prospective RV-7 builder coming up to help shoot these center fuselage skin rivets. In the meantime, I worked on the outboard seat ribs a bit. They don't come pre-punched, yet they have to be fluted to get the correct curvature. I basically lined the rib up with the skin and marked the general location of the holes...that gave me a fluting guide...just flute in between where each hole will be.
I got the curve perfect on the bottom flanges of the outboard seat ribs, but I didn't know at first whether or not the top flanges needed the same curve. So I broke out the seat skins to see if they had any curve to them. Here I've just laid these dusty suckers on top of the skin to get a general sense of where they go.
Here you can clearly see the curvature in the seat skin edge...ok, so I do have to flute the top flanges. Figured I did, glad I checked.
Again, I just marked the general locations of the top flange holes on the ribs.
Tough to see here, but I fluted the top flanges to match the skin curve.
Next I used the little thumb-and-sharpie trick to mark a centerline on the rib flanges. These suckers are ready to get drilled...after the riveting tomorrow, of course.
