Side skin conical bend, day 1

I didn’t get as much done this weekend as I had planned, but I did get started on the side skin conical bends. First I dug out the armrests…

Then I smoothened the edges, fluted the skin flanges and matchdrilled them to the sideskins. Finally I deburred all the holes and set them aside. They won’t be needed again until much later in the fuselage build.

Then I removed the right sideskin. To make the conical bend, the plans tell you to drill and cleco a piece of scrap alu angle to the skin. I had some trouble finding a piece of scrap angle, but I finally found a piece of angle that didn’t seem to go anywhere. Hopefully I was right. 😉

First try of the conical bend. It took me 3 trial fits and adjustments before I was anywhere near pleased with the result, I still think it could be better. I am gonna leave this one for now and try the other sideskin instead.

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