Today was a lot of putting together, marking, taking apart, trimming, putting together to check for fit, taking apart to clean up edges, etc.etc.etc.

laid out the areas to remove for the 603 aft spar flange/elevator control horn interference and the elevator counterbalance horn/HS skin interference. both of these areas are a case of measure twice cut once, so I took my time.

Once everything was laid out, I drilled the corners and then cut to the holes with an abrasive wheel on my dremmel. I cut inside the lines and then finished up to the line with a vixen file. Radiused the corners with a chainsaw file (new file, never used on steel, so as to not introduce the potential for any dis-similar metals corrosion) then dressed out all the file marks with 400 grit sandpaper. Everything came out great.

During the operation, I taped the blade from a stainless steel putty knife to the substructure as added insurance to protect it if the dremmel got away from me,, but it never did.

EDIT- There was a problem lurking in here that I didn't think about until laying in bed this evening after writing this original entry. Ref 11-23-19 empennage entry for details.