Brief Description: Made and installed panel stiffener angles
After giving it a long vacation, the bending brake was dusted off and pressed back into service tonight. The angles tying the instrument panel to the firewall are made of .040" aluminum angle, which is rare in this aircraft. I certainly had none lying around, so I had to dig out my materials and go to work. Installation was fairly easy with the front top skin off, which I removed for another reason as well. As I will chronicle later, the slot that allowed for the canopy hinge was just too far forward for my liking. It left too much of a gap. When Ron Lendon visited earlier this month, we both scratched our heads on this one, and finally concluded that it would be best just to make a new forward top skin. Tonight I pulled out two pieces of .025" aluminum (one for scrap and one for my final version, I hope) to have it ready to go. I'll work off the template of the original in every area except the slot. More later.
.040" angles in place to stiffen instrument panel
Top skin off to complete behind-the-firewall installations
