I did not want to screw the bend up so I really thought through how I wanted to do this. I learned an earlier lesson, which is to look over other builder sites to get ideas and see what stuff they missed or would do over. The idea is I do not want to make a mistake I could have read about and avoided. Now there will always be the dumb slip of the rivet gun mistake but I can live with those. Initially I was going to use an idea I saw with a digital level. You put the angle in the vise all square and perpendicular. Then clamp the level onto the angle and take the initial level reading. It should read something close to 90 degrees. In my case 87.9; now the idea is to bend until it reads 6 degrees different. So I did this until it read 81.9 or so, it was bouncing around that figure. I took the angle out and compared it to a template I drew on some cardboard. It was a little off so back to the vise and a little tug and it was good. For the other bends I blew off the digital level. The bend is so small and was easy to eyeball. All of the other bends went well, only twice in the vise; once for the initial bend then again to get it exact after laying it out on the template. Picture 1 is the 810 angle lying on the cardboard template; you can see the angles match nicely. I used a big chart plotter from my Navigator School days to draw the angle. Picture 2 is the set together after bending, not bad if I do say so myself. One note on the angles; the instructions say to put them in the vise and use a mallet to bend them. In my opinion that is over kill. I just used my hands to push or pull the angle to the proper number of degrees. It is quite easy to bend the 1/8” thick angles.
After the angles it was time to bend the 702 forward spar the same 6 degrees as the angles. This metal is not thick so it can be done with the hand seaming tool. I learned from some other builder sites that relief hole have to go into the 702 at the corner of the bends. This is spelled out in the mechanics guide on bending
6 degee line drawn on the cardboard
Nicely matched! Ouch my shoulder hurts from patting myself on the back.
