Rear Fuselage Lower Skins
Fuselage KAI Page D3
With the rear fuselage ribs in place, my next task was to attach the lower skins. There are 4 large skins and a smaller doubler (RF-SKN-006) that goes on the aft end beneath the bigger skins – don’t forget this one (I nearly did)! The instruction to install it only appears as a small note at the top right of page D3. Following the instructions, I attached the rear-most skins first. There are up to 4 parts that are getting riveted together (rib, longeron, skin, doubler), so the fit is quite tight. As the KAI says, use plenty of clecos to keep the parts aligned. At the very end of the tail, I put clecos in every hole, and then replaced them, one-at-a-time, with rivets.
It took a few hours to complete the riveting task – there are about 700 rivets to install. While the fuselage was turned onto its side, I also took the opportunity to fill the rivet heads with light-weight filler and then sand them smooth – not a fun task, but much easier to do now.
