I'm afraid I've been off the project for about the past week. Partly due to some projects around the house (built a gate for our yard, and helped Kerin with the irrigation system), and have been consumed with the events around the election. Looks like it's going to turn out OK. So, back to work. With the prior test going pretty well, I made up another test piece and marked the bend line precisely 1" from the end. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to transfer the bend location from the test part to the actual skin yet, so am trying to be as precise as possible.

Positioned in the press tooling.

Ready to bend.

...annnnd...bent.

I overbent this part somewhat again...around 62 degrees.

Flattening it on the surface of the table saw got it to around 43 degrees.

In order to align the bend line of my test part with the center of the bend of the triangle gusset arm, I first had to find the center of the bend on that arm. I decided to ink up the bend with a sharpie at two locations.

...then used a cabinet scraper to split the bend angle as close as I could by eye and scrape away a bit of the sharpie.

The resulting line of clean metal showing thru is my bend line.

So, I marked it with a straightedge. It goes right to the bottom edge of the forward bow, which gives me some reassurance that it is correct.

Okay...with the bend line of my test part aligned with the bend line on the triangle gusset arm, I can see that even 32 degrees is too much bend angle.

In the interest of narrowing in on the correct bend angle, I marked the end of the test part with a sharpie...

...and bent a little strip of material as yet another test.

Okay...32 degrees looks good.

Now another test part. I'll try not to overbend this one. Marked out very carefully...a bend line 1.000" from the edge and another at 2.000". I also measured the unbent width of the part at each end in case that measurement ended up being useful.

Okay, that looks good. 32 degrees.

Initial fit against the weldment looks good...maybe slightly too much bend still.

I flattened the bend out slightly to about 24 degrees. Fits better.

Many clamps applied...ready to drill.

Back drilled the row of holes along the top edge of the triangle gusset arm (bottom in this picture) .

Clecoed in place. Looks good.