Work on the firewall has started. I had some holidays between Christmas and New year, which means plenty of time to work on the project.
The motivation is very high again after finishing the wings. The idea of starting the main airplane body is giving me a boost of energy.
I started by marking all the fuselage plans in the same manner as I did with the wings and empenage. Marking makes the plans more readeable and understandable. It's a real good tip. For more details on the color scheme I use, have a look at the new builder tips section of my site. Here's a picture illustrating it.
I also marked some remarks with exclamation marks while marking in areas where important notes are made.
What I noticed during marking of the fuselage plans is that with the fuselage, the amount of lines saying 'Make From...' has exponentially grown in comparison to the work on the wings and empenage.
More and more, Vans wants you to build your own parts from stock angle or sheet material.
This is kind of fun to do, but it also means much more time is required to do all that work.
The manual is also much more cryptic in describing what to do in detail. Vans assumes you know by now how to dimple, countersink, deburr, prime so they don't repeat all those details anymore.
Enough of plans... I cleaned up the workshop to have a fresh start and head into the plane factory.
The work on the fuselage starts with the construction of some reinforcement angles for the floor section. These angles attach to the firewall center and connect to two angles connecting the center bulkhead with the firwall. (some kind of stiffener).
After cutting the angles from a stock bar, this is how it looks like.
While I was at cutting parts, I also cut the spacer and brake plate from 063 gauge stock sheet.
Back to the F-601J angle. I marked the cut off area as indicated ont he plans and made a rough cut of the parts of using the bandsaw.
Pay special attention when marking the cut off area, there's a left and right hand version of this, so your need to mirror the part dimensions on the plan. The plan shows the right piece.
After making the inital rough cut, the master gets at work with the Vixen file to smooth the cut and get the part to the correct dimensions.
Here's the left one done.
Vans is referring to left and right on the plans relative to the seating position and looking forward.
Next step was to mark the dimensions of the holes on the brake plate. This brake plate is a reinforcement plate for the firewall where the two aluminum tube brake lines will pass through the firewall with some AN4D elbow fittings.
I made some pilot holes in the center where the brake line passes through and also 1 pilot hole that will align with the prepunched holes in the firewall. From there, you square the part on the firewall and matchdrill through the firewall.
The holes are enlarged using the step drill. I realised only later I could also have made this cut at once using my new rotacut drill set.
Matchdrilling the brake plate on the firewall
Here's the result after cutting the 7/16" holes.
I found the little angles all together in a little hardware bag. Fortunatly Vans kept these together because some parts are so small I would never have found them back again after inventory.
I deburred all the angles and positioned the parts on the firewall. This is how it will look like.
More work on the firewall in the next session.