It's a funny thing... the further we get along with this airplane (at least in this section) the harder everything gets. i've hit a few spots where i just thought "I don't think I'm capable of doing this." Then you do it once, screw it up, do it again, it gets a bit better, then by the third time, you're a pro. Anyway, here we're forming the aluminum angle that goes along the side of the aircraft. there's a template included in the kit, and you just clamp the thing in a vice and whack it with a mallet. Yay! There are a bunch of other parts that i wanted to whack with a mallet, but here it's what you're supposed to do. The forming process is a bit tedious, as you start to bend the angle in one direction, and because it's an angle, it starts to bend also on the other axis. I thing tenacity is the order of the day here, because if you just go at it a bit at a time and work slowly (no big whacks :)) eventually it'll be the right shape. Then you drill a bunch of holes and the piece basically snaps into the appropriate place on the aircraft. Like it was made for it! hehe.

The next part we got into was bending the fuselage side skins. Yikes. If you go exactly with the plans and don't skimp, eventually you'll get the hang of it. The plans have you making these hardwood blocks that have a very specific shape consisting of a foot long bevel at either end, and a 1/8" radius on one side. I took one look at it and knew that there was no way I could build such a thing. Happily, i've got a co-worker that is a wood working genius - THANKS STEVE!!! - and all it took was a day or so, and he had made perfect blocks out of maple. The side note is that when i initially thought about doing this myself, i went to Home Depot, or as i like to think of it, the poor man's airplane building supply store, and asked about blocks of hardwood, and the kid said "there's two by fours over there, and they're pretty hard." hmmmm. Anyway, even armed with the perfect bending blocks, i managed to crack one of the skins during the bending process. I suppose i could've stop-drilled the crack, and filed it out, but i'm just not capable of leaving well enough alone. So - time to order a new side skin. I was tempted to order an extra of each of the four skins that you have to bend, but by the fourth one, i really had the hang of it. Talk about frustrating though....