Mar 31, 2023     Panel Construction - (7.5 hours)       Category: Instrument Panel

Got to work first drilling and notching the 3/4 angles to rivet around the perimeter of the panels. These should stiffen the panels and help keep them flat.
Next up came bending and drilling the angles to the panels, keeping everything flush to the edges. Final steps were to deburr, countersink for flush rivets and rivet them together.

  Mar 27, 2023     Panel blanks - (2.3 hours)       Category: Instrument Panel

Instrument panel templates were bondo-ed in position (see 10/14/22 entry) to form a custom fit inside the fuselage top skins. Hope was they would separate cleanly from the insides of those skins as the skins are covered by a poly film and the bondo likely wont stick... too badly.
It's good to be lucky sometimes. While monkeying around with the fuselage topskins last week, I pulled all the clecoes and yanked the skins off without thinking of the old bondo job. Wasn't until I looked back some time later, I realized they had indeed separated cleanly as hoped.
Step one is to clean up the gobbed-on bondo blobs so I can use them for an accurate template. Following that, layout on some heavier gauge AL sheet. I'm going with 0.050" 6061-T6. Should be heavy enough to support whatever is going into it even after I swiss-cheese it full of instrument holes.
The upper, curved perimeter gets a 3/4 X 3/4 0.063" thick angle bent around it and riveted in place. Some nutplates will be installed in the angle to accept screws through the topskin, holding it vertically in position.

  Oct 14, 2022     Panel Template - (2.0 hours)       Category: Instrument Panel

Instrument panel templates have been screwed in position while installing and fabricating the fuselage topskins. Cut from an old sheet of wall paneling, they have been a placeholder for the finished product. The topskins didn't form exactly around the full perimeter of each, leaving some gaps.
Fixed the gaps (I think) by blobbing some bondo (I have some extra) in the gaps between the skin and edges of the panels. Aluminum has poly stuck to it so I believe the bondo will separate neatly from that and stick to the wood. Once separated, I'll sand the bondo flat to the panel and have a custom fitting panel template for each cockpit.