|
|
|
|
Christopher's Web Site
|
Date: 8-14-2015
|
Number of Hours: 8.00
|
Manual Reference:
|
Brief Description: Fourth time is a charm
|
|
Back in the shop and back to work. I just returned from spearfishing in La Paz, Mexico, and I am ready to get back in the kevlar gloves and cutting sheet metal. That said, this next piece has been a huge challange for me.
The copilot’s collective well is surprisingly complex for such a simple and small project. Each of the angles are compound, but more importantly are bound and limited by another panel or frame section. If one bend or angle is off, it waterfalls to another conflict. As you can see from the photo below, I made several attempts at this piece, but in the end was just not happy with how it developed. One of the attempts was going well, but I made the width just 1.5mm too wide and therefore it wouldn’t rest between the seat frames. The radius of the bend when using the brake is critical and even the smallest change will be exacerbated by the complementing bend. This is not a piece that can simply be cut shorter with a live and dead end. Both are active against the seat frames.
In addition, it is also very easy to inaccurately bend the top lip of the well so it is either too high and the seat lid won’t sit down flush, or too low and cause a gap at the aft kick plate or not sit level against the other side of the well. At the end of the day, I’m sure no one would have seen the imperfections, but I know that they are there, and more importantly, I knew I could do better. As I mentioned several times before, my sheet metal working skills have dramatically improved over the last month and a half, and it’s tough to just let something go. Just to be perfectly clear…in NO way am I claiming to replace these panels or pieces with perfect substitutes, only that I want to do as well as I can to the best of my abilities. I’m only comparing myself to me.
In the last photo you can sort of see where I riveted the left panel together and temporarily installed in place. It turned out that after my last post I realized that I didn’t have the correct size rivets, so I placed an order with Aircraft
|
|
Seriously?! 4 times?!?!
|
|
Finally, primed and in place
|
|
With aft kick panel
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright © 2001-2024 Matronics. All Rights Reserved.
|
