After making sure the factory gear legs fit, I made a bunch of paper templates for the landing gear fittings. The aft fitting also doubles as the wing strut attach point, so all the alignment is pretty critical. I studied the plans and the resources I have, so it's time to start making parts.
I got a bunch of copies of the full-size templates from the plans and used rubber cement to glue them to an old file folder as a backer. I cut them out. I sorted the templates by material thickness, then made outlines of the templates on the appropriate 4130 plate using a fine tip black sharpie. It took about 2 solid hours on the band saw to get the parts to where they are in the pictures. I cut on the outside of the line so I have plenty of room to finish sand the parts to shape. If I would have made the layout a lot "looser" on the plate, it wouldn't have taken as long. But, I wanted to save material and got the most out of each layout on the steel. I made sure to orient the grain of the steel perpendicular to any bends to be made.
