Today was a great day, very visual as I continued yesterday's engine cowl work
This is a cool trick a fellow builder showed me, use 2-3” tape using the “inner edge” where you want to final trim your cowl. The install the cowl use more tape and line up the outside edges of the tape and the inside edge will be EXACTLY where you want to trim to. Very simple and effective
Then just trim, in the photo it would be a case of trimming the right edge
So I finished the left bottom cowl today and drilled and cleco'd it to the U Channel
Next was the cowl doors. I held the doors up while lining up the front leading edge to the top cowl and marked the piano hinge on the door both front and back. The I removed the hinge from the top cowl and sandwiched the door between the side hinges and clamped it to the work table. The point of this is to have perfectly matched attach holes on the top and door. Using the top holes to drill through the door skin and other side of the piano hinge
Next was to figure out how to match drill the holes for the bottom cowl, U channel and the door skin. The 5 holes drilled will be where the SkyBolt fastener attaches the door to the U Channel and bottom cowl. I used a flush pull rivet on holes 1, 3 and 5, then strap/match drilled holes 2 and 4, then drilled out the 3 rivets and cleco'd in the door on holes 2 and 4 then match drilled hole 3, 5 and 1
The green tape is where I need to make minor trims to make it perfect, then I will sand the edges to take and sharp spot off and finally roll the edges
Repeat for the other side and boom you have doors
Full photo to show where things are to date