So now I have to get serious about riveting the aft skins on. The difficulty here is that the skins cover the top of the tail cone and the tail cone is not designed to have people crawling inside of it. The first thing to do is make some kind of temporary floor in the tail cone to protect the bottom skin -- of the airplane and the person crawling inside.
Some plywood salvaged from the Van's fuselage crate is employed for the temporary floor. A few cut outs to clear structure and the floor is ready. The plywood is not resting entirely on the bulkheads though. I placed blankets and pillows underneath to spread out the load across the bottom skin as well.
After installing the temporary floor I crawled inside to take a look around and found that is was not at all difficult to get in or out and it seemed to take my two hundred pound frame without complaint.
OK, time to get on with it. The aft top skins having been previously prepared, are clecoed on. Then the rivets are placed and taped down so that they will not jump out when the riveting starts.
My helper has once again elected to buck, so she had to get inside. She was a pretty good sport about it, only stopping once to request a pillow for her head. Naturally, her request was denied and she was ordered back to work at once. Kidding, kidding.
I used up the last of my roll of rivet tape. I've been mostly using masking tape on this project because of the expense for the rivet tape. The rivet tape works much better. I had actually forgotten how much better it really is. I think for my next plane I will just throw caution to the wind and really splurge. I'll buy two rolls of rivet tape.
Well, here it is. Aft top skins complete.
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