I started today’s session were I left off yesterday. I started by machine countersinking the remaining 36 holes on the bottom row of the Left Fuel Tank Skin. Now, all 145 holes in the Left Fuel Tank Skin have been countersunk.
Next, I machine countersunk all 145 holes in the Right Fuel Tank Skin. As you can imagine, countersinking all 181 holes took up a bulk of my work session today.
I finished today’s session by fabricating the T-00003 Tank Stiffeners for both Fuel Tanks from stock J-Channel. To start, each of the Stiffeners were measured and cut (with my bandsaw) to a length of 54”. I then drew a centerline down the length of the flange of the J-Channel, marked and drilled a #40 hole in the flange at 5/16” and 1/4” from one end, and clecoed that hole to corresponding hole in the Tank Skin. Then, the centerline on the flange was “centered” in each of the corresponding Tank Skin holes and match-drilled to #40. Each J-Stiffener has a total of 55 holes.
This picture shows the J-Stiffener after all the holes were match-drilled, deburred, and the edges cleaned.
The last step was to dimple all 110 holes in the J-Stiffeners.
This is just a close up of the dimpled holes in the two J-Stiffeners.
