Got a whole mess of parts that make a fuselage…or part of one.  Tempted by the promise of hamburgers at Bartley’s and a big bottle of Bundaberg Over-Proof rum, Captain John slugged through rain and traffic to help me assemble and begin riveting the fuselage “canoe”.

We did some of the more difficult riveting on the fuselage, specifically the AD4 universal-head rivets that attach the seat ribs to the F-706 aft baggage bulkhead.  A single-offset rivet set was really handy, and it was good to have John there – he’s much better at shooting those rivets than I am.  There were a few places on the center ribs where we couldn’t get solid rivets in place, so I fell back to using Cherrymax blind rivets. To paraphrase an old Tom Cruise movie…”Cherrymax…there is no substitute.”

We’re now well on our way to having another real airplane part.