Drilling lightening Holes April 1st, 2006
Rather than sit and wait for my new angle bracket to arrive, I decided to start drilling the lightening holes in the rear spar reinforcement bar. I went to a couple of hardware stores looking for a fly-cutter, but had no luck. Fortunately, my co-worker and fellow RV-7A builder Bruce Wagner offered to let me use his cutter. This is a mean little bugger (the fly-cutter that is). I can see how it can do some damage to both bodily parts and the workpiece if anything comes loose. I made sure everything was clamped way down, and used plenty of cutting oil.
The end result is a nice reinforcement bar with 7 holes along the center section. The ‘white spots’ around the circles is where I used some emery cloth to smooth out the edges and remove scratches. These actually look nice and shiny (when they’re not reflecting flash light!)
