Fuselage

I'm summarizing several days work on this page. A lot of the time spent over the last few days has been on the usual boring tasks of deburring and preparing the parts for the cabin frame assembly. The F-631A channels come fairly well finished, but the edges are uneven and rough. So I spent some time filing them straight and deburring them. I did all six of them while I was at it. Four of them are used for the roll bar, and two are reserved for use on the tip-up canopy later on. So I set a pair of them aside. Next, the two long attach strip bands that go inside the channel need to be deburred as well. Then, I finished drilling all the holes in the angles and plates that can be drilled at this point.

The long angle on the bottom right above, the F-732D, needs an 88-degree angle instead of 90-degrees. So it needs a 2-degree bend. So I clamped it in my vice and bent it with some gentle persuasion from a hammer. You can't really see it in the picture, but it's done.

The plans call for a 1-1/2" hole to be cut in the two aft sections of the roll bar assembly, left and right sides. So I got out my least-favorite tool once again, my fly-cutter, and set it up in the drill press. There's a tooling hole right there on the channel that looks like a good one to use for a pilot hole, but careful measuring shows that it's not centered. The actual center of the 1-1/2" hole is very close to the tooling hole. So don't be tempted to just use the tooling hole. I clamped each channel down and carefully cut the hole. It really pays to take your time here. When the holes were cut, I spent some time deburring them with my die grinder and small scotchbrite wheels until they were nice and smooth.

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