Fwd/Mid Fuselage Join

Got up early this morning to get right back to building! I knew today was going to be exciting because the first thing to do was to attach the Fwd Center Section Bulkhead and then mate the forward and mid fuselage sections together, making one continuous piece of the fuselage! Took many photos of this ceremonious occasion:

Fwd and Mid Fuse sections prior to joining, looking aft

Fwd and Mid Fuse sections prior to joining, R side

Fwd Center Section Bulkhead, inside view

Aft Center Section Bulkhead, inside view

After a bit of finagling with the wing attach bolts and spacer plates, I got both halves lined up, skins layered appropriately and everything bolted into place:

Fwd and Mid Fuse halves mated together!

Fuselage is starting to have some real mass to it now!

It was really cool to see these parts come together and form a quite significant part of the fuselage. Lots more to go still, of course, but this was definitely a moment worth relishing.

Next on the list was to begin riveting everything together. I'll need Sarah's help for a lot of it, but she's busy packing for OSH15 (I can't fault her for that, haha) so it's just me in the factory today. I was able to do the double-flush rivets that join the Fwd and Mid Bottom Skins to the Fwd Center Section bottom flange and go beneath the landing gear mounts though. I had been worried about these rivets, because double-flush is always a bit tricky and I wasn't 100% sure I had countersunk them properly on both sides. I was relieved to see that all 14 (both sides) turned out well and I guess I was worried about nothing. Better than the opposite I guess!

Double-flush rivets to go under the landing gear mounts

We'll leave the rest of the bottom skin rivets for a later time, it seems we can carry on with the plans with them just clecoed into place for now. In the meantime, I finished up bolting the Fwd Fuse bulkhead together and riveting the remaining ribs to their respective bulkheads. The only other thing left for now is the bottom firewall flanges, I'm going to save those until I have some firewall sealant (at this point I think I'll be using 3M Fire Barrier 2000+ but I haven't ordered anything yet). Again, these rivets are in a location that will be accessible anytime, so there is no rush to do them right away.

With that, we are through Section 28-14 step 11, and we have a fuselage that is coming together nicely! The next steps appear to be some minor fabrication work to make the seat floor assemblies, followed by a second trial-fitting of the landing gear mounts for more match-drilling.

This afternoon we're off to a friend's house for a 4th of July celebration, so that's it for now. Happy Independence Day!