Well, after being gone a few weeks it's good to be back in the shop!
The first order of business is to bend the longerons for the top of the fuselage. It took WAY more time than I anticipated, almost four hours to make two pieces. The first one I tried to do a cold bend from Station N to Station M. It ended up with a minor kink in the tubing on the inside. It just wasn't going to work bending it cold even though Eric Newton in his BH manual didn't say anything about having to heat this area. In the 1997 BearTracks, it does say the upper longerons will require some heating to bend in the cabin area, so I decided to bend it hot. The kink wasn't much and would be covered with the tubing that intersects it, so I went ahead and got it ready to bend hot and it worked fine. I put 1/4 inch shims under the tubing and where I would swing the tubing to the inside I put two carpenters squares on top of each other, making a 1/4 inch path for the tubing to slide on. I put a 1/16th inch steel plate under the bend area and marked the cross tube position on the plate with a silver pencil so I knew where to heat and bend. I did all this so I could heat the tubing without setting my shop on fire,
