Tonight I cleaned the cockpit with rubbing alcohol, and rotated the fuselage upside down in preparation for paint.
I have some new paint that arrived, smoke grey color, which will be used to coat the cockpit. I want to tune up my paint system before I start on the cockpit, so I will start by painting the rudder peddles.
Tonight I finished masking up the cockpit in preparation for painting. I used dowels in the nutplates to hopefully prevent any paint from fouling up the threads.
The area will need a final clean up with alcohol before I can start spraying.
Today at lunchtime I quickly finished setting the final rivets in the baggage area, completing the chapter. Next I will be painting the cockpit, and then installing the brakes and rudder pedals.
Yesterday I was able to install the flap motor channel and flap motor brackets, and today I installed the baggage compartment side walls. Actually, I didn’t quite finish; there are some rivets I will need to buck tomorrow to wrap up. It is too late in the evening to start riveting.
The pop riveting is so fast, it’s really amazing how quickly and easily it all comes together. I wouldn’t attempt this without a pneumatic squeezer though, it would be painful to manually set these hundreds of rivets. I made extensive use of the “wedge tool”. I found it very useful to have a piece of tape on the little wedge so I could tape it into the correct orientation before setting the rivet.
