2 hrs. bolting the fuel tank to the left wing.  Yes, 2 hrs...  It required a lot of pressure and torque to get all 12 bolts in.  Two of them were particularly difficult and required a tremendous amount of pressure to get it to catch and start to tighten.  Without the pressure and it would just spin in place.

How I tapered the bolts to get them to help center the nut plate as I pushed it in.  If the nut plate is perfectly lined up with the hole in the spar I would say to try it without tapering it first.

I partially torqued all the bolts to make sure they were catching before committing all of them to the full tightening.  Note that the instructions say to put on the skins and then do the bolts, but I do not recommend doing that because then you have put these bolts in from below and that would be very difficult.  It's difficult enough coming from above.

I found that I had to be able to push pretty hard for the bolts to catch and the standard socket is too deep to apply pressure at the same time as turning them , so I put a nut in the socket and then it was shallow enough to push the bolt.

High Torque + High Pressure + Confined Spaces + Sharp Metal = There Will Be Blood....

A couple of sets of the bolts fully tightened.  Tomorrow the top skins!!

Bonus picture of Crosby as he greets me in the morning. :-)

NEXT TASKS:

1. Top skins riveted on (STRINGERS!).  Fill rivets with Bondo.
2. Leading edge riveted on (STRINGER!).  Fill rivets with Bondo.
3. Rivet fuel tank on.  Fill rivets with Bondo.
4. Install landing lights.
5. Wing tip assembly and light installation.
6. Put the aileron and flap on the wing to check for straightness of the trailing edge (Thanks Peter, I saw that on your blog! ;-)).
7. Finish sanding of left wing bottom rivet heads.
8. Finish right wing.
   
9. Finally finish one of the composite tips of the elevator.
10. Fill rivets of elevator with Bondo.
11. START ON FUSELAGE!