Drilling the holes in the Roll Bar - 3 hours

 The process of drilling the holes in the aft deck (to miss nicking the longerons) means that the #40 pilot holes in the roll bar are not perfectly aligned with the final sized holes in the canopy deck. After all, we are drilling them to final size separately. I opened up the aft mount holes in the Roll bar to 1/4" for the AN4 bolts, but left the forward holes #40. After some checks, I can see the pilot holes do not perfectly align with the AN3 holes in the canopy deck. I will have to move the pilot holes ever so slightly. 

The best way to rectify this is to make a drill template off of the canopy deck.

Eager to use the 3D printer again... I carefully made a template to fit the mount holes in the canopy deck. (Took a couple of tries to get it perfect).  

 

Once the template is confirmed to be a perfect fit with the canopy deck, I then mounted the roll bar onto the fuselage and clamped the template onto the roll bar. 

Taking the roll bar off, you can see the #40 mounting hole is not in the correct spot. Its just off of center from the template. 

Then using my smallest round file. I slowly...very slowly filed the hole larger and moved the center of the hole in the template. Once I got aligned much better to my liking,I was in a much better position to ream the hole to accept an AN3 bolt. (3/16") 

There is no denying this was a very long and labor intensive method, but in my opinion it was the only way to ensure precision.