After checking the fuselage sides, made from 1mm ply, were identical (not checked thoroughly enough - will cause me trouble later!), the doublers were glued in place.
Longerons were glued in place, then once again sides checked for accuracy and conformity (once again i didn't check properly, wrongly assuming they'd be accurately cut at the factory). They were clamped together and sanded down to give an identical shape.
Phew! Avoided the mistake of making two left sides!
The plans call for drawing paralell lines on the drawing board to help lining up the fuselage sides for joining. I also made up some temporary formers to hold everything nice and square. I temporarily glued these to the board.
In order to see how things would fit, I offered up the radio gear, it became clear I'd need a nose-block if the fuselage sides were not to be tortured into a tight curve at the front.
I then spent a very tedious few hours making and glueing cross-pieces out of 1/8" square to join the two sides. No guidance was given on how to do this and, unable to figure out how to invert the fuselage to do the bottom without losing the squareness, I did a lot of faffing around with tweezers glueing in the bottom pieces. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of that, but this shot taken later shows the cross pieces at the top of the fuse - you can see how narrow it is at the back - trying to get the bottom pieces in was an exercise in patience and tenacity! There were hundreds of the buggers! Well, thirty-odd anyway...
This dry, I then started with sorting out the internals - pushrod for the elevator, elevator control horn etc., doing a loose fit to see how things would go.
Next installment, fitting the wing joiner dowels... fiddly!
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