More on Fuse Formers

Over the weekend I didn't have a lot of free time due to various things. I did find time to start riveting the fuselage formers I started last month.

This is a shot of fuselage station former 162.00. The former is six pieces of aluminum. Four for the top, bottom, & sides with two shear webs riveted to the bottom corners for strength.

This is very similar to constructing a large RC plane. Only it would be constructed of plywood & epoxy resin.

I built and wrecked a lot of RC Planes in the 90s. Maybe some time I will up load the spiral of death my P-47 kind of survived.

Here's a shot of the rivet shop heads I made with the main squeeze. Nice and uniformed.

This former needs a little touch up primer and a few drilling guide holes for the skins and it will be all set.

Assembling the formers has been one of those busy tasks that has to be completed. When I can not progress on the main plane, because I lack the extra hand I need to complete that riveting, I look into the plans for subassemblies.

Keeping the idea of getting ahead by completing subassemblies I started laying out the fire wall.

The fire wall is made up of some very light gauge stainless steel. To beef it up some aluminum angles are riveted to the front and back side of it.

The front side of the fire wall gets a couple of aluminum angles attached to it looking like a "T".

The back side gets a couple of more aluminum angles. There are a few more parts that go on the fire wall (like an engine) that I have to locate in the many boxes of parts I got from Mustang Aero. (I hope it's in here some place.)

You can faintly see in the last picture the many layout lines I scribed, I mean drew with a Sharpie pen. I like lots of colors.

The Horizontal Reference Line (HRL) is in red & the Center Line (CL) is in blue.

I aligned the aluminum angles with #40 holes for now. I will drill them out to #30 at a later date. (Like when I have an engine...It's got to be in one of these boxes.....)

Well, I'm hoping to get more done this next weekend. Only time will tell. BWW