A few days ago, I opted to re-do the F-684R gusset due to the notch having to be enlarged and causing me to run into potential ED problems on the most forward hole common to the F-713 Aux Longeron. Well, guess what? I goofed it again!

Spent a long time laying this out, had the thing positioned and the notch located so that all my edge distances were good. verified this by clamping them in place and marking the hole layout through the skin with nail polish, then taking them out and measuring again. Match drilled the holes common to the F-713 and still all good, with plenty of space along the forward vertical face to get good edge distance on both the F-684 and the vertical firewall stiffener angle. Life is good...Then catastrophe!

In laying out the hole pattern on the gusset for the vertical row of rivets common to the firewall stiffener, I measured up 10/32" from the edge of my meticulously crafted notch, but what I should have done is measured from the end of the stiffener. What this means is that while I have good ED on the gusset, it's shy from the end of the stiffener by about 1/16" The thing that irks me about this is that I new better!

I had clamped this all up and drawn where the stiffener laid on the gusset, knowing full well that I had to measure for ED from that line, but when i laid out the hole pattern, it was the end of the day, I was tired, blahblahblah. For whatever reason, I had the gusset flipped over and I laid out the hole pattern on the other side, forgetting completely about that detail.

You can see in the picture below, the sharpie line shows where the end of that stiffener lays on the gusset and the hole needs to be moved down about 1/16" to have good ED. This isn't the end of the world because I hadn't drilled it to the firewall, but it's annoying as heck to have to re-order yet another one of these $4.00 parts. Especially since the ED was good everywhere and I just screwed it up due to a dumb mistake.

On The plus side, I had already fabricated the one for the other side, and it came out great. I will say that like so many things on this project, the seemingly simple parts are the ones that will bite you if you're careless, and this gusset is an absolute minefield of potential edge distance problems. If Vans would have made it even 1/8" longer along the horizontal axis, it would be a LOT easier to lay this part out. No matter what you do, your going to have exactly minimum ED on the aft most hole common to F-713 laterally, and not much more than that vertically.

If you're reading this, do yourself a favor and go slow, order a couple of extras, or if you have access to a shear, make your own that are a little bit bigger