August 22, 2005

Did anyone notice that I assembled my latch the wrong way round? I did, when I saw the picture. It was then I realised that was why I couldn’t get the handle to line up straight! Duh! So, I flipped the latch over this evening, and set about polishing it. Here it is, fixed and shiny. I’m glad I didn’t drill the outside handle on yesterday before my “moment of clarity”.

Now that this bit is sorted, I started on the outer handle proper. I drilled the handle with a No. 40 drill in the drill press to get a pilot hole, then drilled through the tube in the assembled condition. Then I drilled to the correct sizes and tapped the handle for the screw. I didn’t like the squareyness of the lever, so I did something about it. Basically, I made a lot of aluminium dust. It took ages, but it was well worth it. It’s these finishing touches that make it. All this was done with a file and emery cloth.

Things were rolling along nicely this evening, so I figured I’d stay a bit longer. It was time to start the rear pin anchor blocks. Well, I’ve been thinking about future canopy removal (probably should’ve done that BEFORE welding the roller brackets in eh?!) and I figured that the best way would be to make these blocks easily removable. Since it is impossible to remove the screws that hold the nylon pieces in, the whole bracket would have to be removable. I mounted these using nutplates in the U-brackets, so the bolts are inserted from below. I know that’s not the preferred way if it comes undone, but the prevailing torque from the nutplates will stop the bolt from dropping out for sure.

Here’s the left side in place.

That was it for tonight. If I get to the hangar tomorrow (highly likey), I’ll do the nylon blocks.