The majority of my time today was spent making the shallow bends in the two longerons. This involved laying the template that was provided on the floor and making many many comparisons of the longeron bends to the template. The first one that I did I ended up over bending. To make the bends in the longerons you have to clamp them in a sturdy vice, beat on them with a rubber mallet, loosen the vice and slide the longeron down an inch, tighten things up again and beat on it again. Just a couple of taps at each station is all you really need to make these shallow bends. The hard part is keeping the angle from twisting. When you bend it in one direction it tends to bend out of plane and you have to constantly apply a counter-twist pressure as you strike the longeron with the mallet to keep the bend in one plane. I found it was easy to over bend. These are very shallow bends that need to be made gradually with many iteration checks against the template. You also have to constantly lay them on the floor to make sure they aren't twisting and bending out of plane. This was definitely a very time consuming process but not particulary difficult. It just required some patience to get things right. The only thing that was difficult was keeping the orientation straight in my mind as far as the left and right longerons go and the direction the bends needed to be made. I will make the final downward bends in the forward sections tomorrow and also add that twists that are required in the plans.
