Tue Jan 20 21:10:39 2009 - The two halves are now joined. I'm gonna leave the hinge pins in while the epoxy sets.

Tue Jan 20 19:53:53 2009 - Things are looking pretty good and snug so far. As I was back-drilling through the hinges, I used a piece of 2x4 to provide support and something to drill into. This made drilling through the cowl very easy and quick. Then it was on to countersinking, then cleaning, then epoxying/riveting the hinges. Aniko helped placing the rivets as I followed behind with the squeezer. It's amazing how much faster things go when you have a good helper.

Tue Jan 20 17:57:41 2009 - This turned out to be pretty easy. Secure the hinges with their respective pins then place the cowls together. I slid the two halves fore/aft as necessary to line up the lines I had drawn earlier. Once that was done, I fixed things in place with some Vice-Grips.

Sun Jan 18 17:40:45 2009 - Decided it was time to do the hinges that joins the cowls. For no particular reason, I chose to start with the top. Fiberglass can dull cutting tools pretty quickly, so I ordered a #40 pilot PermaGrit contersink from Avery Tools. The pilot's side has been epoxied and riveted into place and the passenger side is prepped and ready to go. I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to line up two cowls just right when it comes time to drill the bottom hinge into place. I suspect it's going to take a lot of clamps and delicate balancing act. We'll see.

Sat Jan 17 18:00:11 2009 - After some sanding/fitting, I've got a darn near perfect fit all the way around. The small vertical lines are so that I can line the halves when I do the hinges. Up to now, all this work is being done with as little gap as possible. When all the attachment points get drilled and fixed into place, I'll trim the edge to allow for paint (ie credit card thickness gap. I thought it appropriate to use an old EAA membership card).

Sat Jan 17 17:26:00 2009 - This is what I need to trim from the bottom cowl.

Sat Jan 17 17:23:55 2009 - With the top cowl all ready to go, I installed the bottom cowl and overlapped the top over the bottom. I then traced a trim line onto the bottom.

Sat Jan 17 15:29:31 2009 - This inside line represents what I need to remove in order to have planar surface front to back. This was determined by clamping a metal yardstick up near the front and rear then tracing a line. This was done on both sides of the top cowl. If you look very carefully, you can see the outside line denoting the boundary, if you will. This trimming also removed a lip that was also present along the edge.

Sat Jan 17 15:24:50 2009 - With the bottom and corners now fitting pretty well, I overlapped the lower over the upper cowl and marked this line. This is the total amount of excess material I have to work with. The plan is to get the top cowl as straight as possible while using half of the available excess material. That'll leave half for the bottom cowl for fitting purposes.

Thu Jan 15 18:51:11 2009 - These black marks show where the attach strips are rubbing the cowl . After trimming the bottom corners down a bit, the cowl fits much better now.