Tonight was one of those nights where I stood around and scratched my head a lot and assembled and disassembled things over and over to figure out the right order to put it all together so pieces didn't conflict with each other. I was trying to think through the best order for eventual riveting. While the tailcone structure is pretty simple, the aft end is hard to fit together unless the stringers are left out until the very end (as opposed to what the instructions say). I did also get a tiny bit of actual construction done as well. All of the stringers had to be trimmed on the fore and aft ends to allow one portion to slide in between the end bulkheads and side skins. It was a simple task, but took a while, since of course none of the cuts called out in the plans are just 90 degree cuts.
The thing I really puzzled over for quite a while and eventually gave up on was the most aft skin and aft bulkheads fit. The flanges on the bulkheads are all a perfect 90 degrees from the web, which means none of them fit the pretty dramatic skin angle. That's easy enough to remedy by just changing the flange angle, but they are so far off that it has me wondering if I've done something wrong. The plans don't really show anything very clearly unfortunately. As luck would have it, I'm going to go visit another builder on Friday to borrow his longeron bending dies, so I'll be able to take a look at his project and hopefully figure out how things should fit.
