It was a long time coming, but I finally got the fuselage flipped over! Rose helped me finish the last handful of really awkwardly placed rivets that we kept skipping over in every other riveting session. She and I were able to role the fuselage 90 degrees at a time, pulling out saw horses, until it was right side up and setting on the fuselage stand I made. For now I just propped the aft end up on a saw horse, but I will need to lower it soon and get everything level and twist free so I can drill and rivet the aft deck, which locks the geometry of the entire fuselage in place. I almost threw the floors in just so I could sit in it and make engine noises, but I resisted the temptation....for now.
The jury is still out on whether or not it's going to be worthwhile to replace the seat back support with the "Almost a 14" modification. What that does is replaces the support with a stainless steel version that is much smaller and sets further back, allowing the seat backs to be offset from each other. From what I've been told, getting 4" of room for the passenger seat to move back relative to the pilot seat (or vice versa) doesn't seem like much, but because it means you're no longer shoulder to shoulder, it makes the cockpit feel much larger. I would do it in a heartbeat except for the fact that it's made for the slider canopy setup. It works with the tipup, but requires a pretty significant amount of work to redo the canopy latching mechanism. Once I'm done riveting the side skins and put the seat pans in, I'll sit in it with Rose and see what I think. We're both pretty small, so it may not be worth the effort.
While the fuselage was upside down, I had to remove a bolt on each side at one of the bulkheads in order to get a bucking bar on a rivet. I put the bolts back in and torqued them back down.
All in all, I'm pretty happy with how all of the riveting turned out. The only place that I'm not thrilled about is on the lower, curved portion of the side skin where the center section connects to the tailcone. The curved portions just don't fit all that great to begin with, and because of that it's not easy to make things fit up nice and tight when riveted together. The left side ended up looking pretty good, but the right side is a little rougher.
It's hard to see in the picture, but from the outside you can see that near where the curve starts there is one portion with a gap between the skins. It's minor, but of course it bugs me. I'll leave it for now. If it still bothers me in a year, then maybe I'll drill out the rivets and try again. It's purely visual, and almost underneath the plane, so I'll probably get over it and just leave it.
The next step is to rivet the upper portions of the side skins to the various stiffeners and bulkheads, as well as some random areas like the baggage ribs to the aft baggage bulkhead. I can now do all of that myself, so I'll be able to start moving a little faster again.
