Hours 1.3
I didn’t have much time to work tonight, but I did get past a step I was fretting. No, I’m not referring drilling holes in HS-702. Even though I was confused by that yesterday, today, I looked at a few builder’s sites, queried vansairforce.net, and all was clear. Now, I was worried about tapering the HS-710 and 714 splice angels. How do I draw the appropriate curve, how best to remove the material, how much is too much to take!
Ok, breath…
The plans are actually fairly clear on how far back to taper, and the outboard most holes are the only ones where you really have to worry about your edge distance. After making some measurements, I started to look for a good template to use for the curve. Besides being round, the template had to leave the perfect amount of edge distance. Low and behold, Van’s supplied the perfect one, I just had to find it.
**Builder’s Hint** AN960-416 1/4″ washers are perfect for edge distance if you are using a 4- rivet! Center the washer over the hole and trace around it with a sharpie…Perfect edge distance all around. To get the taper, use a straight edge to draw a line from where the taper should start to the top (or bottom) of the circle.
Cutting the taper is another story. I practiced making the cut with my band saw on a scrap piece of aluminum angle. As usual, I was worrying about something simple. The band saw quickly cut a straight line in the scrap. On to the real ones.
I rough cut the tapers with the band saw and then filed them down the rest of the way with a vixen file. Tomorrow, I’ll finish the pieces by rounding and polishing the edges with a Scotch-Brite wheel.
Top - uncut; Bottom - rough cut with band saw
After rough cutting the HS-710 and 714 splice angles, I'll need to finish them up with a vixen file followed by the Scotch-Brite wheel.
