Ruining some parts^1.5h

Today was a day to ruin a few parts!

First, I started by fitting the gear attach webs. The edge distances on those are really tight! The holes are centered in the auxiliary longeron, so you get at most 1/4" edge distance for the gear attach web (3/4" wide longeron, halved, minus the thickness of the angle). And that's assuming it sits tight to the longeron -- which is hard to get because longeron has a rounding in it.

I started by filing the edge to fit the part. When I got what looked like an okay fit, I drilled the holes.

You can see the edge distances are not great. I don't remember exactly if all of them are still greater than 0.219", but after looking at the part a bit I decided to replace it. To get a better result, I tried to use my wood router with a rounding bit. It actually worked pretty well. However, after severy tries on the other part (the left one), I found that I put a bunch of scratches on the part. Oops. They are probably not that bad (most likely, just the alclad layer), but since I'm reordering the right part, I decided to replace the left one as well. Next time I will route without the protective plastic removed.

Some good news was I received my new rudder system from Control Approach.

Looks good, but will require some custom plastic bushings to fit.

Then I went back to the external step since I also received a replacement plastic bushing for the step. I started to drill it... and ruined it while pulling the drill up: the bit grabbed and lifted part from the vise.

I guess I could have used two other corners and just leave this mangled hole as is, but I ordered a replacement anyway.

Then I called it a day so I don't break more things.