Brief Description: Drilling the fuse forward side skins
The first thing I had to accomplish was twisting the upper and lower fuse channels by placing one end in my vise and grabbing the free end with an adjustable wrench and twisting the channels around like a string. The twisting is necessary for the channels to match the engine mount weldments. I measured the angle of the channels before twisiting them with my electronic angle to estabish a reference. I then measured post twist to determine the final result. I went back and forth until I got the twist to within a degree.
Next I moved on to bending of the forward side skins. The procedure was bascailly the same as the for the mid fuse side skins, but with a few differences. I had to slightly modify the clamping block by adding a radius to the sloping edge. Van's has you cut a new slope down the length of the block to which you add a radius to the edge -- I opted to use the same edge, now with a small radius, that I used for the mis fuse skins. The other difference is the roll angles are just clamped to the skin verses clecoing as there's no holes to cleco to. I setup everything and discovered I clamped the roll angles below the roll line instead of above it. I was also having clamp issues. My first attempt to make a bend was terrible and I almost creased the skin. So after cussing and some head scratching, I discovered my roll angle placement mistake and also made a quick trip to Lowes to pick up some of the wide mouth vise grip clamps dipicted in the plans. Now ready for a second go, I set everything back up and completed the bends without any further issues.
I then clecoed the skins on and began match drilling to the understucture.
