Since I procrastinated on buying the toolkit (not really, I was hoping to get a used kit, but finally gave up on that), I did what I could today without having clecos and the oh-so-wonderful (or so I hear) Souix air drill. So it was some more cleaning up of the shop, so maybe I can find stuff when I need it :)
I bought some little plastic bins at Lowes. It was against my better judgement to put those rivets in there. I got to meet and visit another local builder, Jeff, and he had the horror story of dumping all his bins of rivet and still doesn't have them all segregated.. He suggested (and I have read elsewhere, too) to get the little plastic tubes with rubber caps, one of which is split open.. I know that description sucks, so when I find them I'll post some pics.
Got a drill press at Lowes, too. It has the 'redeye' laser to point exactly where it's gonna drill. Cool, but it isn't too acurate. Left/right it's OK, but the laser X is about 1/16 inch aft of the actual drill. Oh well, it was cheap (and made in China). You can also see the RV-6 poster Vans sent along with the Empennage. What's up with that? I want my -7 poster dammit!
More great chinese goods, this time from Walmart. I got 4 of the 3-packs at $4.44 each... Not too bad.
Time to put the drill press to work. I drill a couple holes in the scrap sheet aluminum included with the kit to make sure it was all good. Then I proceded to drill the bend relief holes in both HS-702s. This was after I measured out and dremeled off the extra flange on there (and attempting to remove the little bit of bend left from the flange). A little filing later and it looks pretty much like the drawing! Interestingly the drawing shows some of the flange protruding into the relief area, but the instructions said that the exact length of the flange wasn't critical, as long as there's the standard 2x hole diameter left at the end. The only problem I see with that, is that there is no pre-drilled hole in the flange back there, so I guess we'll find out if it's ok later when the skin goes on. ;) You can see some of the distortion at the edge of the sheet metal from where the flange used to be.
And here's the other HS-702. Looks pretty good to me.
Here's my first 'duh' of the project. I was whining last time about how HS-710 and 714 didn't fit well in the channel of HS-702. So I did a bunch of sanding and got it pretty good. I still wasn't completely happy with it, so I later looked at other builders pages to see what they had to say about it. No problem for them, since they put it on correctly. :) Those 2 angles go on the other side of the HS-702s. No problem.. I didn't drill them yet and the only 'damage' done was the extra 'breaking' of the edges of HS-710 and 714, as seen below. And that won't hurt anything...
One more thing I can do without the toolkit. Trim the HS-404s. Dremel and file, and they're just like the drawing!
