Trimmed the Longerons for the Firewall - 2 hours

A short day in the garage today. Very much a plane day, but just not productive. I drove out to the airport this morning and took the Cessna out for a spin. Was great to get out but my radio work is rusty.  Ugh.

After picking up some lunch I started working in the garage and measured out the 3/4” that I need to trim the longerons back. Doing a little research on what people did doesn’t reveal a whole lot on info. Not many people seem to talk about it. I ended up drawing reference lines 3/4” back from the edge of the side skin.



Then I used a square to transfer these lines onto the longeron.

One thing to note is that I purposely left my longerons extra long from what the plans said, fully intent on cutting them down. As you can see, I really left a lot of material.

 After clamping a block of wood as protection, I used my dremel and a cut off wheel to cut the longerons. In the process....I lost my dremel. Yup...It got too hot and died. So now I have to run to the store and buy another one. Darn!
After getting the new dremel, I finished cutting the angles, then went to work with the files and cleaned up the ends to the line.

I test fit the firewall, and it appears that I could even go another 1/64th of 1/32” more with a file...I’ll take a better look at it tomorrow when I can get a proper temporary support under the firewall.