First item today was to remove the bearings from the pushrod ends, get the pushrod in place, reinstall the bearings, and attach the pushrod to the control column and the bellcrank.

After much head scratching, I decided the spanwise segment of the smoke oil line should go closer to the bottom skin. It's certainly not ideal, but there will be more clearance with the elevator pushrod than if I put it near the top. Unfortunately this means I'll have to do a couple of the bends in-situ, as well as the accompanying flares, but I believe that's preferable to having the line either too close to the top of the ribs or the elevator pushrod.

In order to drill all the holes in all the ribs in alignment with each other, I made a little drilling template. You may notice I'm using some NIB magnets to hold the template in place while I drill.

Let me tell ya...these suckers are powerful. I had one clenched in my fist while removing another one, but apparently didn't have it held tightly enough because they snapped together. Ouch. Don't feel too bad...I was talking to a guy at the Dayton Hamvention who sold a couple big square magnets like this. Apparently the customer (wearing shorts) thought he'd keep them separated by putting one in each of his front pockets. Well, floppy pockets being what they are, the magnets apparently got close enough to each other and snapped together on the guy's junk. Lol.

Once all the pilot holes were drilled, I needed to use my unibit with a long extension. Not having an extension long enough, I figured I'd make one up...which gave me a chance to use this nifty Clamptite tool I bought at Oshkosh a couple years ago for the first time.

I had a long piece of 6061 tubing, with 5/16 OD, 3/16 ID. I drilled the end to 1/4 inch to accept the shank of my unibit, cut a slot down the side, and then used the tool to create a safety wire clamp.

Pretty nifty.

The extension worked great!