Matt's RV-8 Project



Matt Dralle's RV-8 Project
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Date:  6-21-2014
Number of Hours:  2.00
Manual Reference:  
Brief Description:  Rounding Bottom Flange of Baggage Door - Part 02

So, I ordered up another pile of parts to build a third baggage door. But this time, before I did any building, I decided to try to get the fit better right out of the gate and while I still had just a single flat skin and no bulkhead structure underneath. I worked though in my head a dozen different ways that I might put a creaseless bend in the bottom 1" of flange on the door, but nothing seemed like it would really work. Then I remembered that my piece-of-crap-Chinese-made combination shear/brake also had a roller on it! But I didn't get too excited, because I'd never really used the roller because they just seemed like a bigger piece of crap than the rest of the tool. Today, I decided to take a closer looks and figure out just what tweaking I'd need to do to get the rollers working.

The first thing I discovered was that the rollers still had the anti-rust, shipping compound on them which made them very uneven and not too consistent for grabbing. I broke out the Acetone and some paper towels and gave them a good cleaning. Turns out, the rollers were pretty well made and smooth, once all the gunk was removed. Next, I fiddled around with the adjustment arms that vary the distance of the rear roller from the front rollers. This distance gives you looser or tighter bend radii depending on their position. But you have to make sure that the distance is exactly the same left-to-right if you want a consistent bend radius. I used a digital caliper and got things dialed in pretty well and used a few sample pieces of .032 2024-T3 to test.

Cont Next Log...
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Third Attempt - Virgin Skin, Initial Fit

Third Attempt - Virgin Skin, Initial Fit

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Third Attempt - Virgin Skin, Initial Fit

Third Attempt - Virgin Skin, Initial Fit

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Third Attempt - Combination Shear/Break/Roller

Third Attempt - Combination Shear/Break/Roller

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