Cabane happiness

It's growing slowly but surely.

The nose section now has cabanes with all the pieces attached! I added the compression struts to the back of the cabanes using some long rivets and two 1/16" washers. It took a bit of filing to fishmouth the tubes to match both angles and fit to the correct depth. Sort of glad that I'm bolting rather than welding.

A bike trainer stand does a great job of keeping the nose section standing upright while I'm working on it.

The central cabane intersection in progress. The main plate has the proper bolts and associated hardware. The forward cabane strut has the insert and is happily riveted. The aft strut is what needs work next. By the plans, it is about 1/4" shorter than I'd like to see. I have an extra piece of 3/4" x .035" tube that I'll cut long for this replacement piece. I also need to do the insert for it and then all the riveting. I'm out of rivets again.

Yeah I'm out of washers too... 200 washers last time wasn't enough!
I worked a tad on the kingpost too, despite that I can't assemble it on the aircraft inside! I haven't cut the large holes in it to pass through the cable connections.

I have not yet bought the tubes that go over these inner structural piece. I still need to get a vice so I can ovalize the outer housings. I think it will look better with the ovalized tubes dressing up the structural pieces.

So next I'm going to work on the tail ribs back down in North Carolina before coming back to the nose section. I'll then order the rivets, washers, and materials to make the vertical fin (aft fuselage, tail section, whatever you want to call it) so that the nose and tail are connected! That'll be four or five months from now though :-)