Finishing Kit

With the prep work finished, I started in today on the final assembly of the canopy frame. The first thing was to drill out the #40 holes through the side rails and the C-613 splice plates to full size. So I clecoed them together and clamped the partial assembly to the workbench. This turned out to be a good way to drill, deburr, and rivet these parts.

Here I have all the holes drilled to #30, except the one that will hold a skin rivet. It stays #40. Then the holes were countersunk for flush rivets.

The next task is to fabricate the C-723 spacer wedges. I've read on a number of websites of other builders that this was a dreaded task, taking lots of time and hours of work filing and working on these tiny parts to get them made just right. I found a real good solution, if you happen to have a disk sander available.

Measuring carefully, I found that the maximum thickness I needed for this wedge was less than 1/8". That made it easy to use a piece of 1" wide scrap angle to make them from. The angle half not used makes it easy to hold onto. In just a short time, I had this piece wedge-shaped and almost ready to go. The only caveat I would warn you about is to have some leather gloves on, or a clamp to hold the angle stub, because this piece gets HOT! from all the sanding. I would work on it for a few moments, then let it sit on the metal and cool off, then go back and do more. With careful work, this piece is made easily and in a short time. When it fit just right, I deburred it on the scotchbrite wheel, and split it down the middle on the band saw into two 1/2" pieces. Perfect!

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