Fuel Tanks

Day 2 of building the fuel tanks... not much more visible progress, just match-drilling, final-drilling, and countersinking. The L tank is ready to come back apart for deburring, and the R tank isn't too far behind. Only noteworthy thing from today is a bit of a funny story. Sarah was match-drilling the T-1009 Tank J-stiffener (Page 18-3 Step 1) on the R tank, as depicted here in the plans:

Excerpt from pg. 18-3

It's a pretty simple step, and one that we've done a number of times before for the wing skins and tailcone... but as they say, the easy steps are where you are most likely to make mistakes. Anyway, Sarah was holding on to the J channel from the inside with her left hand, and match-drilling with her right. I noticed she was in a very similar position to how I did it yesterday, and darn near went through my finger with the drill. So, I cautioned her about making sure her hand was out of the way. The exchange, according to her, went like this:

Mike: 'okay, so just make sure your finger isn't right behind where the drill is gonna come out.'
Sarah: 'okay, okay I got it.'
Sarah: ' owww! Son of a -----!!'
Mike: 'are you serious?!'

She's ok, folks! Barely even drew any blood... quick reflexes I guess :-)

After that, she decided to put on safety glasses. Not sure how those would have helped in this particular situation, but I didn't stand in her way anyway. With that, and after drilling out a few hundred more holes in the tank skins, we called it a night. Should be only a day or two away from our first round of Pro-Seal! (woo...)