11/4/2007
Today was not as productive as I had hoped. This morning, I couldn't get myself in gear AT ALL! I went out to the garage at 10am or so. The first thing I needed to do was make the F-721D angles for mounting the panel. Easy enough, right? Wrong. The plans say to "See DWG 24" for how to make this piece. Okay, DWG 24 is for the slider canopy. I don't have a slider canopy, and therefore, I have no clue what I did with DWG 24. I searched for it for the better part of an hour. No joy. Then I remembered I have the drawings in .pfd files on my computer. Why didn't I think of this earlier? Beats me! So I finally got going on the piece, and fit the panel around 11:15am. This is not quite the final iteration of the panel, but it's close...It will depend on if I decide to use the canopy jettison handle or not.
The little angles are tricky to fit properly because the panel has to be in place to drill a couple holes, then it has to come off to drill the other holes. They need to be clamped at times as well. Oh, somewhere in there I managed to run a #19 drill bit in to the top of my hand. That was nice. And then while riveting the 721D's in place, I managed to NOT figure out that I was using the right side for the left, and proceeded to drill holes in the wrong location AND rivet it in place! The left side turned out okay, but the right side had to have the holes enlarged, and then I screwed the 721D in place, rather than use rivets. No big deal, just frustrating.
Above you can see why the panel has to come off to drill the holes in the lowest angle. It is bent to an acute angle, and there's no way a drill bit is getting in there with the panel in the way.
Here's the right side finished. The lower angle is the one with screws instead of rivets holding it to the 721 canopy deck.
Only 2.75 hours today? Yep, I finally broke down and bought a tool box. Sears Craftsman Club had a great sale on this box that started today. I bought it for $90, and they say it's normally $160. So, I spent the rest of the afternoon reorganizing the tools that were in the filing cabinets I was using for tool chests.
Pretty nice tool box for $90 if you ask me!
2.75 hours