Pic of the Day

[jonwrightk7]

Excellent stuff!!

[sbt]

<Sees what looks like remaining, unfilled, rivet holes> 'Fully riveted down'? - or were you just referring to the bit under the cockpit and the rest of the outer floor wasn't complete at that point?

[sbt]

I should have made it clear that I had worked out about the centreline rivets. However, being a boater, certifiable genius, and annoying smart-arse, those big dark holes in the bottom of the hull struck me as sub-optimal.

'Snagging' you say? Are you sure it wasn't 'Muttering obscenities, crawling over and under the boat looking for the problem, muttering more obscenities, hitting stuff with a hammer, trying desperately not to force anything and muttering more obscenities, all the while worrying about how much time the Chocky had left you'?

[Renegadenemo]

I should have made it clear that I had worked out about the centreline rivets. However, being a boater, certifiable genius, and annoying smart-arse, those big dark holes in the bottom of the hull struck me as sub-optimal.

What happened there is that we added two nice thick stiffeners to span F-15 where there's a disgraceful discontinuity in the structure running all the way around the front of the boat. It may as well say 'cut here' and that's exactly where it failed so we've spanned it wherever possible - not that we envisage another high-speed accident but more because in the few years I had the pleasure and privilege of working with Ken Norris this is the sort of thing he wanted to evolve on the rebuilt machine. There's also the fact that there's a repair in both outer floors in this area and the stiffeners span the repair too. Problem was - we ran out of rivets. We were about a half dozen short until a new box containing 7000 arrived the following week from our great friends and sponsors, Stanley Engineered Fasteners, at which point those big dark holes were filled with rivets.
There's always a certain amount of snagging to do. Sometimes rivets fail to set properly or the stems fail prematurely so there's always a few to be taken out and done again but for the most part modern rivets are amazing things. We've worked with old stock and they can be very temperamental but the number of failures on the floor, which took about 14,000 rivets to put it down, could be counted on one hand.
The choccie was the biggest problem that day. We accidentally used a batch with only a two hour open time so by rights we ought to have snookered ourselves but the low ambient temperature kept it quiet for the six hours we needed to get the floor buttoned up. It was quite a job!

[quicksilver-wsr]

Brilliant seeing the 'floor-back-on' pic in POTD today! Easy for onlookers to take milestones for granted these days, but any way you look at it this is one of the biggies.

Congratulations on a mega-chore achieved!

Nigel

[jonwrightk7]

That was a BIG MOMENT!! well done everybody!!

[Andrew453]

Just to echo what Nigel and Jon have said above, to those of us watching progress from afar this seems like a defining moment. There are doubtless several mountains yet to be climbed, but it must have felt good when you stood back to admire your work. It is a fantastic achievement. Very, very well done, team!

[Renegadenemo]

Thanks, everyone...

Taking the floors off was the first major commitment in this project. Everything else we could bolt back on and pretend we'd never had it apart but the floors were a different animal and I didn't much fancy being the bloke who took Bluebird to pieces and never put her back together again so those floors have reminded me ever since. Then we had no idea whether they'd fix, being exotic material, and if not, what would we do... In the end we got them within 1/32 of an inch over 20 feet and totally original so a satisfactory ending.

Next we have to paint the underside so we can get the centre hull down off the rollover jig, get some systems back in for a test or two and the plan is to take her for some basic testing on a privately owned stretch of water while Coniston and the LDNPA sort out the red carpet.

[Techteam]

As cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University?

[jonwrightk7]

Good to see you got our best features there Mike!!