Installing F8 & F9 Bulkheads

I finally spent time working on my project yesterday. I worked on locating and installing the F8 & F9 bulkheads. I used an 8 foot piece of 1"x2" square alum. tubing as a straight edge and placed it on top of F6 & F10 bulkheads to determine the height of F8 & F9 bulkheads. I had already used this square tubing to make sure F10 was level with F6.

Click on image to enlarge

The photo above shows the assembled bulkheads, but I assembled them after the next step I'm about to describe.  I had to figure out a way to get the tops of the bulkheads to stay in position while I attached the skin. I had assembled my bulkheads by laying them on the plans. I temporarily assembled them with cleco's, but found that they were too tall to fit between the square tubing and the 2"x4". So what I did was I disassembled the top of the bulkheads and clamped them to the underside of the square tubing. I located them in a postion where the top skin would transition nicely onto the side stringer (I use a scrap peice of .020 alum. for this). I then used some scrap 1/16"x3/4" angle as temporary "holders" to keep the top bulkhead piece in place where I wanted it. Once I had drilled holes and cleco'd everything in place, I could disassemble everything and begin to figure out how to attach the remaining side and bottom bulkhead pieces, which I kept assembled.

I had to trim my side pieces so I could raise the bottoms to the correct height. I slid them between the temporary mounting angle and the face of the bulkhead and then aligned everything the way I wanted it. Then drilled holes and cleco'd things together.

Take note of the hole in the left side piece. This is the hole that the elevator push rod tube is suppose to go through. Again, I drilled this hole by placing this piece on the plans and locating it's position. As I said before, the bulkheads didn't fit until they were trimmed down. I only trimmed from the top on both side pieces on both the F8 & F10 bulkhead (instead of trimming a little off the top and a little off the bottom of these pieces), so at this point, I don't know if this hole is in the correct position. I'll let you know when we get to installing this push rod tube. If I had to do it over, it might be better to drill this hole later on.

I did try to pull the top skin down over the top pieces before attaching the side and bottom pieces, but I didn't feel comfortable in doing so. I'm now ready to try this again. Till next time...