mattasmith12
Active Member
After 4.5 years stationed in Hawaii (I know...poor me), I have been doing my best to make progress on the RV-6. Winter is setting in here in Michigan, so the time is perfect to keep my tropically acclimated butt inside and focus on building.
So...after much fretting and reading the forums, I have succeeded in bending my longerons for the RV-6 fuselage. It really was A LOT less of a headache than I thought. I used the method where I applied some pre-load and whacked it with a dead blow hammer. That's a pretty effective method! In fact, I got a little carried away and over-bent...necessitating some course correction.
I was able to tweak the contour to fit the cutout I had made from a section of plywood. Everything looked pretty acceptable. Unfortunately, I was disappointed to notice that a series of small, barely perceptible ridges were left in the longeron. These are only visible in certain light. But they can be felt slightly when running my hand over the longeron.
Should I be particularly bothered by these? Do they have the potential to deform the skin? Should I build on?
So...after much fretting and reading the forums, I have succeeded in bending my longerons for the RV-6 fuselage. It really was A LOT less of a headache than I thought. I used the method where I applied some pre-load and whacked it with a dead blow hammer. That's a pretty effective method! In fact, I got a little carried away and over-bent...necessitating some course correction.
I was able to tweak the contour to fit the cutout I had made from a section of plywood. Everything looked pretty acceptable. Unfortunately, I was disappointed to notice that a series of small, barely perceptible ridges were left in the longeron. These are only visible in certain light. But they can be felt slightly when running my hand over the longeron.
Should I be particularly bothered by these? Do they have the potential to deform the skin? Should I build on?
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