Day 7
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Day seven had a punch list that never seemed to end. Falling a little behind the curve, we never fit and colored the door windows a day in advance so that was top priority as the color had to cure in order for the windows to be installed today. Once that was done the door windows were set outside and allowed to cure until the end of the day. As the day progressed, the builder found time to finish drilling all the holes in the tail spar. We did the preliminary fitting of the windshield for installation at a later date. The builder had built the baggage door hinge, during the prior week, in preparation for fitting and installing the baggage door so we fit and installed the baggage door to clecos and left the riveting to the builder for another day. The builder asked about the cabin air vents, so we jumped on that and installed both cabin air vents and did all the putty work / filling on the outside of the fuselage. With the door dogs installed and cured, we hung the doors and adjusted both
sets of latches so the door closed with one hand pulling and one hand latching. The horizontal bracket shim was glassed in place and the bracket and horizontal were mounted. Once the horizontal nose down angle was established, the holes were drilled in bulkhead E. I then demonstrated the final cleanup and silpruf filling of both ¼ windows perimeter. The builder pointed out a couple of stress cracks on the belly around the center screws. They were caused from shipping and were excavated to determine if any structural damage was present. Lucky for us there was no real damage and I showed him how to fix and gel repair the area. Next, with the door window color cured, we tackled the door window installation on both doors and then hung and latched the doors on the fuselage to cure for a couple of days. The last thing to do was to demonstrate the gel coat sanding and polishing on one of the areas we sprayed. The top deck aft junction was chosen. I demonstrated the sanding technique and brought the
area up to a polished luster by hand rubbing (hand rubbed only because we didn’t have a variable speed polisher) with rubbing compound and polishing compound. With a shiny gelcoat area we called it quits for the night and I packed up for the flight out the next morning.
