Several small updates since last post:

We removed all the masking from the interior that was painted gray, and are pleased with how the gray color we used matches with the existing gray powerdercoat on the airframe.  

Gray interior, masking removed

 We also worked on the turtledeck area, adding a strengthening plate that fits under the antenna.  We are using flush mounted solid rivets here to make it look nice, and practiced riveting  on some scrap aluminum before working on the turtledeck.  The practice rivets came out great; however, when we attempted to the first few rivets on the turtledeck, things didn't work out so nicely.  We attempted to drive 2 rivets, and noticed a few small dents from the rivet gun, and also one of the rivets was not flush.   We immediately stopped and considered what went wrong and how to recover.  We noticed the rivets were not tight in the holes, and this appeared to have been caused by the holes expanding slightly during the dimpling process.  Also, the dents were likely caused by not holding the rivet gun precisely perpendicular to the piece.  We drilled out the rivets, and ordered slightly larger rivets so that they would fit better.  We also tapped out the slight dents with a metal working hammer and dolly.

Once the new rivets arrived, we re-dimpled the holes for the larger rivets.  The existing holes were slightly undersized at this point, so we drilled them to the final correct size so the rivets would fit perfectly.  This second time around, the riveting went great and all the rivets came out looking nice (and no dents).

Ed doing a little riveting

Underside of strengthening plate (riveted to turtledeck)

We received the new rear windshield bracket (the original one was incorrectly drilled as mentioned in an earlier post), trimmed it for fit, clamped it in place carefully, drilled it, and cleco'd it in place.

Rear windshield bracket drilled and cleco'd in place

Lastly, we installed plastic fairleads for control cables and the pushrod.  The pushrod fairleads have nice rings that could be set into place with a tool.  But the fairleads for the control cables just have miserable ring clips that are very stiff and difficult to snap into place.   Hours: 15

            

Cable fairlead with clip snapped into place

Interior Paint, Turtledeck work

We are planning to install our Com antenna on the turtledeck, and since the aluminum is fairly thin in this area so we decided to bolster it with a doubling plate in order to strengthen the area.  We made this 10"x10" plate from 0.25 sheet aluminum, bending all the edges down with a brake to strengthen it further.  We drilled holes and dimpled the material in both the turtledeck and the strengthening plate, and will rivet them together in the near future.

Doubler for Com antenna

We decided to paint (prime) the interior of the plane gray in order to make it look a little nicer, and to match the gray color of the existing power-coated tubing.  In order to match the grays, we decided to create our own shade of gray by adding pigment (Mixol dye #1) to Superflite white primer.  We experimented in order to get the grays to match, and ended up using 100 drops (about 5ml) of black pigment for every 6 ounces of primer.   We did a lot of masking to try and keep things neat, and didn't paint the sections that will be covered with aluminum floorboards.  We applied the colored primer with regular paint brushes.  It took 2 coats to even everything out, but we're happy with the results. Hours: 14

Gray interior