Countersinking Fuel Tank Skins

Continuing from the past couple of days, we picked up on the right fuel tank. I had the T-405 angle all drawn up from Monday and just had to cut it out. With a few swipes on the band saw and about fifteen minutes on the bench grinder we had our second one done! To get the hole pattern on the second one I just clamped them together (they mirror eachother) and match drilled it. Once we had both of our brackets ready, we clamped them to the inboard ribs of the fuel tank and match drilled them. We made sure to leave a bit of room between the angle and the skin since there will be rivets being set right there. It looks like enough room for a shop head, but if we need to we'll just put a few notches in the angle once the rivets are set. After the rib itself was drilled, we clamped on the T-410 plate and match drilled this, yes we match drilled a lot, but it provides the best results!

The plans call for the fuel tank skin to be countersunk where the baffle attaches to it. We weren't sure if we were reading this right because skins are normally dimpled since they're so thin. This skin was .032" so it wasn't as thin as others, but we still decided to research this a bit more. We found out that this was correct and the reason for this is to make it easier to fit the baffle in upon final completion. It has to slide into place and if it were dimpled it would make it more difficult get into position. I'm guessing they want these steps to be as quick as possible since you're using Tank Sealer.

While I did the countersinking Dad finished devinyling all of the rivet lines on the skins for the tanks and they are now ready to be dimpled. Towards the end of the working day I got acquainted with the capacative fuel senders. I finally have an understanding on how they work and they seem pretty simple. At least there's not going to be any moving parts in our tank! Except for maybe a flop tube, and trapdoor..

Tomorrow after work I hope to continue on the capacative senders and get the tanks ready to be sealed! Eventhough we have the tanks ready for the most part I feel it'll be a little while before we're ready to start the sealing process, which I hear takes a few days to do correctly.

And yes, I cut my hair. FEELS GOOD.