I was out of town all weekend, so I didn't get any work done on the plane. On the way out of town, though, I picked up the rudder pedals from the local metal coatings place where I'd dropped them off to be powder coated. They turned out pretty well. The color is a lighter shade of grey than I'm planning to paint the interior, but the finish should be durable enough to stand up to repeated shoe-scuffing. Not bad for twenty bucks.
Since I received the parts I needed, I made the other seat back brace tonight:
I spent the morning riveting together all the stuff I primed yesterday. Here are the seats, the tunnel cover, and a seat back brace:
Here are the seat adjustment thingies riveted to the top of the F-705 bulkhead. Okay, you can't really see much, but they're there.
Here's the elevator bellcrank riveted together and being test-fitted in its home:
In the afternoon I started on the rudder pedals. Here they are, two pairs of rights and lefts. I managed to avoid the classic blunder of building one of the pedals backwards.
These took a lot of deburring, as the material is pretty thick. I still need to do some work deburring the lightening holes.
Here are the pedal weldments and bearing blocks being test fitted. I drilled the holes in the bearing blocks on the drill press, but I haven't drilled the blocks to the fuselage yet.
You may have noticed a wall clock in one of the photos above. I bought it at the hardware store today for $6.99, with the intention of putting it up in the garage. It has a plastic hook for hanging on a wall. It has markings on the face, numbered 1 through 12 inclusive. It has three different indicating hands. It has many other features – however, when a battery is inserted, it does not actually keep time. Naturally, as this is one of the primary functions of a clock, I was fairly put out.
Mary helped me prime the big pile of fuselage parts, which made it go a lot faster. This pile includes all the parts for both seats, the seat adjustment brackets that go on top of F-705, one of the two seat back braces, the F-6111 stiffeners, the forward tunnel cover, and the F-635 bellcrank.
Finished deburring my giant pile of miscallenous parts tonight. Gonna try to get these all prepped and primed this weekend.
