When I started to install the horizontal stabilizer anchors on the 159.625 bulkhead, I noticed that my upper pad on one of the weldments was not completely square. This is the pad that the tube weldment attached to the rear spar of the stabilizer will sit on. The reason is that the upper pad on the weldment was bent using a metal form block mounted to one of the down standing legs of the fitting. The problem is that the legs are not parallel, and if you happen to use the inboard leg as your reference, then the pad will be crooked. At first I tried to convince myself to just mount the mating tube at an angle, or scarf the bottom of the tube at the interface (and back spotface the bottom of the pad)...but ultimately I decided just to remake the weldment. As it turns out, I am not as happy with the welding on this part as the original because of two factors. 1. I left a bigger gap between the top pad and the side legs (actually this is per the drawing, but my first weldments were pushed smaller) this means that the weld has to either be big, or you need to run two welds on each side (welding between the .125 filler plate and the .063 sides and top) 2. I decided to run the inside weld further back into the part. This ended up carmalizing the top weld due to the fact that I did not back gas it. So it looks a bit uglier...but still has good penetration and is structurally sound. Anyway, the pad is absoulutely square in all directions. (One less thing to worry about)
