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!)
Am I blind or what… April 1st, 2006
Remember this picture from my previous post?
Well, these white angle brackets (VS-410) need to be moved down by one hole!!!
Of course, I figured this out after I had drilled the two extra holes in the top bracket. The bracket now has two holes where there aren’t supposed to be holes, and the rear spar and reinforcement bars have an extra hole in the center.
So, I’ve decided to throw away the bracket and order a new one…only $5 plus shipping (i.e., around $15!!)
The ‘extra’ hole in the spar falls right on the edge of an optional 2″ lightening hole. So, I’m going to make the hole 2-1/8 instead. To make sure I don’t get too close to the next lightening hole, I’m making the next slightly smaller. The end result is that the distance between the two holes remains the same. See the next entry for pictures…