After a bit of a lull in operations this past week, I was able to attack the project again.

I started with fabricating a second portion to the drill guide. The pieces made last week were the guide plates. They are intended to locate the drill holes accurately. The new piece is to work as a guide to ensure that the drill tracks through the spar accurately and lines up with the spar plate and the guide holes on the opposite side of the spar. I cut out a plate of 0.050" steel and bent it into simply a U shape that would wrap around the top (or bottom) of the spar and have a bushing to track the drill bit perpendicular to the spar. Each leg of the U has a hole to allow some tubing to pass through it. Once I get that tubing welded to the legs, I'll be able to cut the tubing from the middle and clean up the inside of each leg. This will provide me with a drill guide that ensures the tracking of the drill bit. At least, that's the plan.

I also laid out the spar caps and blockage for the landing gear. I made these blocks from laminations of ash a while ago. I'd made them oversized to allow for final trimming once the spar was laid out. This allowed me to space everything for the spar and make the necessary alignment. As planned, I had to shave about 1/2" to 3/4" off either side of the blocks to get them to fit nicely. This was a bit of an effort since ash is such hard wood. I cut holes through the spar bulkheads and trimmed them for proper fit. A lot of measuring and checking before anything was glued together.