Finished bolting and riveting the cover ribs to the bulkheads. Most of the rivets could be reached with the squeezer with a combination of longeron yoke and 3″ yoke. The others I had to set with offset rivet set. This was easier than I thought it would be as normally the offset set causes all kinds of issues.
Next the bearing braces need to be screwed in and riveted. The screws are quite hard to reach even with a stubby screwdriver and for some reason I didn’t have a spanner to fit the nut. Seemed wrong to be using an adjustable but it is all I had.
Finally, a few holes need to be reamed with either the .311 or .375 reamer on both bulkheads. I managed to do a couple with the pillar drill but the Forward Centre Section bulkhead with the cover ribs is impossible to get under my cheap pillar drill so I clamped it to the bench and very slowly reamed the holes. By lubing the reamer and inserting it into the hole and then using the drill very slowly, only a minimal amount of material was removed. Apparently Vans ream the holes so there should be very little material removed. I also stopped the reamer once it was through and then pulled it from the hole to prevent side pressure taking more material as it came out.
Section 26 complete! Now back to deburring and priming…
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