First thing I did today was to finish deburring the third piece in the brace kit. I just wanted to get it done. It's a relief to have those pieces ready to work on now. Next, I decided to mark the side skirts where they will eventually need to be trimmed. As you can see here, I'm matching the angle to the aft top fuselage skin, right at the bottom of the canopy frame. It will also need about 1/4" trimmed off horizontally across the top, to match the height of the aft skin, and also the height of the side channels on the canopy frame. You can see the mark I made, about 1/4" from the top of the side skirt.
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August 29, 2011 - 3.0 Hours
I'm putting two days' work on one page, since yesterdays entry wasn't much. I had some fun today with some of my tools. I finally got around to cutting and fabricating the parts for the canopy struts. There's more to these little parts than meets the eye. I carefully cut them first, using my band saw. Then the drill press to drill the holes. Then I clecoed them together as seen below, and ran them on the scotchbrite wheel. This procedure results in very nice, perfectly matched edges. I also cut the thick pieces from the thick bar stock.
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Some of these holes need to be tapped, and I also need to decide how I'm going to finish them. Prime and paint? Leave them polished aluminum? Or something nice like red anodizing to match my side rails? Decisions, decisions. We'll see.
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