Sun Feb 24 2008

Bending longerons

Putting the gradual bend in the longeron makes the angle twist. So I clamped on some boards and used the C-clamps as handles to untwist the curved section.

After finishing the gradual bend in the left longeron, it was time to do the sharp downward bend. This dimension is supposed to be 2 3/4" +/- 1/4". I'm within 1/32" so I'm gonna call it good enough!

I didn't get any photos of putting in the 17 degree twists, but it worked the same as two pictures up. Here are the completed (from a bending standpoint) left and right longerons.

I marked out one of the aft canopy decks for trimming and was about to start trimming this stuff off when I noticed a note on the drawing that says I'm supposed to drill through this deck into the longeron before trimming off the aftmost two holes.

Starting at the forward end of the canopy deck, I

  1. Clamped the canopy deck to the longeron with a c-clamp close to the hole to be drilled
  2. Use calipers to verify the .032 inch overhang of the canopy deck past the longeron
  3. Drill the hole
  4. Pop in a cleco
  5. Move everything down to the next (actually I did every other) hole and repeat

It was getting late so I decided to do the right longeron tomorrow.