Biting the bullet

I had put it off for as long as I could. I have looked at them from every possible angle, agonized over whether or not I had them bent just right in all three dimensions, found other things I could do to further postpone the decision to commit to drilling them, and finally reached a conclusion: it was time to bite the bullet and match drill the longerons. There was nothing to be gained by putting it off any longer.

An excuse I had been using was that I didn't have a suitable piece of scrap to use as a stunt double for the side skins, but I found just such a piece while searching the shop for something unrelated. I also found the missing fuel nipple that gave me such grief. Typically, I did not find what I was actually looking for.

The first step was to get the scrap faux-skin clamped to the longeron.

Then the canopy sill was clamped on such that its edge was overhanging the faux-skin.

In order to have any kind of stability at all for the impending and ultra-critical drilling operation, I had to find a way to hold the assembly in place on the workbench. I clamped it to some of the left over 2x4 scraps from the construction of the workbench.

With the traumatic memories of the 71 hole drilling marathon of the center section still painfully fresh, I dreaded drilling through the longeron material. I needn't have worried. I loaded one of the brand new #30 drill bits that I had purchased from a tent-dwelling huckster when I was at Oshkosh. Truthfully, I didn't see how these bits could come anywhere near the lofty promises that guy was making, but I have to admit that I was wrong to doubt him. Hot knife, meet butter. Those bits tore into that aluminum like a Doberman into a pound of bacon.

Even though the longerons will have to come back off for deburring and priming, I went ahead and clecoed them onto the fuselage just to make sure everything fit.

Once they're cleaned up and primed, I'll be just about ready to rivet on the side skins. Before I do that, though, I'm going to do a thorough audit of any holes that don't yet have rivets in them to make sure that I haven't missed the step that would have filled them. Things are going to start getting a little harder to reach once those side skins go on. 

Taking the longeron way around

I'll skip to the punchline: I got the second longeron opened, bent, and twisted. Me being me, though, I took the longeron way around,.And me still being me, I'm going to share every gory detail. It's been awhile since I've worked on the plane, what with various and sundry distractions having conspired to set my goals adrift, but I was determined to get the second longeron completed this weekend. Having the longerons done should, in theory, allow me to get back to the little penny-ante jobs that are so much easier to fit into my daily routine.

Having struggled with the first longeron and thinking that a second pair of hands, and experienced hands at that, might be beneficial when I faced the second longeron, I invited Co-pilot Rick to come by on Saturday afternoon to relive the joy that is longeron bending. I thought I'd get out to the hangar before him to get everything ready to go. Having learned my lesson about how easy it is to bend in the wrong direction, I very carefully and thoroughly marked the aluminum stock to make sure everything would go in the correct direction.

I also went ahead and got the longeron teed up in the vise so we'd be ready to jump right into getting the 5.4 degree opening made on the end.

I had forgotten what a sub-optimal method that is. While it's much better than the Van's suggested "pound it with a sledge hammer" approach (primarily because that method is completely dysfunctional and makes absolutely no sense at all), using the steel pipe coupler has its own issues. For example, there are only two spots on the coupling that make contact with the longeron. Can you see the two "bands" around the circumference of the pipe coupling? What happens in the best case is that the bands create dimples in the edges of the longeron. In the worst, and sadly most common, case only one of the bands works against the longeron. That causes the dimple, but also causes the longeron to bend.

Rick and I talked it over and I decided to follow his suggestion: go to Lowe's and get a longer, smoother length of pipe. He also advocated getting rid of the wooden 2x4 pieces that I was using to protect the longeron material from the sharp edges on the vise pads. We could use the scrap left over from cutting the longerons down to the correct length. Excellent ideas, both. Off to Lowe's we went, which ended up being surprisingly painless. We had no trouble finding a suitable pipe and I took the opportunity to buy a replacement set of lights for the boat trailer. ("What boat trailer?" you ask? Well, follow the 'distractions' and 'adrift' links in the first paragraph - that's what they're there for).  Once back it was just a matter of minutes before the whole contraption was set up and ready to go.

The down side of this approach was immediately apparent: now that I was not only trying to open the whole length at once but was also opening a whole 'nuther chunk of angle. It took even more pressure than it had before to get anything to move. And it had taken a lot of pressure before.

You think that shirt is loud? You should have heard the screeching and snapping of my back!

It looked like we were making good progress, though. Just as I got to the point where it seemed that the JOMT* methodology had gone as far as it could, it seemed to start getting easier. Figuring that I was simply growing measurably stronger in a matter of mere seconds, I did exactly what the JOMT methodology dictates: I gave it another turn. It was at that point that only one of two things could be true: I was either suddenly and shockingly a strong candidate for a spot on the Olympic weightlifting team, or something had gone horrilby awry in the vise. Not surprisingly, the latter was the case.

Huh, it seems that vises are for holding things, not pressing things. Who knew?

Again not surprisingly, we called it quits for the day.

Sunday morning found me at Lowe's again, this time buying a new vise. I was in a bit of a rush and managed to waste a perfectly good chance to pick up a couple of more things for the boat trailer (What? You still haven't looked at those links??) before Lowe's got to its normal Sunday afternoon condition which, in a handful of words, is best described as a pain the rump.  Having recently discovered that I have the upper body strength required to rip the guts out of a 4" vise (yeah, well, whacking it with a 4 lb. sledge hadn't helped, had it?) I went ahead and bought the 6" vise. I thought briefly about buying the 5" but they were the same price, so...

I had to mount the thing to the workbench, but that didn't take long. In no time at all I was ready to start putting the bend in the longeron. Thankfully the former vise had used its last breath on this earth to finish the 5.4 degree opening. As with the first longeron, the bending of the curve is somewhat anti-climatic, assuming that you do it in the right direction. I did, this time.

With that done, I put in the 4 degree twist (made easy with the electronic angle measuring thingy I picked up at Harbor Freight for $23) and called it quits. Well, I did one more thing: I set both of the longerons in their presumptive locations on the fuselage just to see how they looked.

Then it was on to the boat trailer. I figured there was no reason to spend any time troubleshooting the existing lights since I already had a replacement set in hand, so the first order of business was to get the old lights out of the way.

It turns out that troubleshooting wouldn't have taken very long at all.

I was clever enough to not just yank the old wiring out before using it to pull the new wiring through the center pipe of the trailer.

Wiring in the lights was easy enough, but it was kind of like working on the RV-12, too. Put on a light. Notice that I forgot to put on the license plate bracket. Take off the light. Put on the license plate bracket. Put on the light. Put the light on the other side. Realize that there's no way to get the wires to the back of the lights while they're on the trailer. Remove the lights. It goes on like that... you get the picture.

I finally got them installed and went to get the car to hook them up and test them.

Wrong car.

I'd have to go home for the other. I'd have to stop at Lowe's on the way because in my morning haste I had forgotten to buy a new length of rope and a functional quick release clasp for the rope in the trailer winch. It was the broken clasp that had let the boat fall off of the trailer. (Just go read about it, won't you??) The rope was also looking pretty worn out so I figured I'd just replace both.

The trip to Lowe's went just about like you'd expect for a Sunday afternoon visit. There was a long line at checkout waiting behind an old oblivious guy who was so busy chatting on his new-fangled portable telephony device that he was blind to the fact that the cashier was trying to get him to sign the Visa receipt. I bought a $9-ish 50' length of rope and a $2-something clasp and was so surprised to be charged $21 for it that I checked the receipt on the way out. It showed two $9-ish ropes and nothing about the clasp. I turned right around and went back.

"Oh, I don't know why I did that. You'll have to go to Customer Service to get that fixed."

Customer Service had two people working, and both of them were working on the same thing: another old couple trying to figure out how to fill out the application for a Lowe's credit card. They couldn't decide on which name to use. It seemed obvious to me: just use whichever name will stick your estate with the unpaid balance. Duh. I'd like to be able to say I was pleasant and cheerful when I finally received my $7-odd refund.

I can't.

Trading cars turned out to take a little longer than expected too. I still had another project to take care of: we're almost out of bread & butter pickles, so I needed to get another batch made.

With the pickles in the fridge, well... pickling, I ran back to the hangar to test the trailer lights (they worked!) and replace the winch rope and clasp. As I was finishing up, the guy that hangars his Cardinal across from me came over for a visit.

"So, how's your project going?" he asked.

I replied, "Which one, precisely?"

It's been that kind of weekend.


* Just One More Turn

Crickets in my canister

One could be forgiven for alleging that my belfry is inhabited by bats, what with the heat and humidity today being barely within the upper legal limit for being safe to sustain in a sauna and me crazy enough to be endeavoring to fashion a left side longeron right out there in it. Steeped in it, as it were. Stewing in my juices. One would have to be nuts to work on such a frustration-infused project in conditions such as these. Yes, "he must have bats in his belfry to be out there in this awful muck."

'Tis a fair cop.

But... it's the first chance I've had in days, and it was becoming ever more difficult to suppress the feeling that my project is foundering on the hostile shores of Neglect Island.  I've been busy with various and sundry chores, tasks, obligations, and to be perfectly honest, less energy-sapping forms of recreation. Fearing that all of the precious momentum gathered in my most recent effort for force my will upon the seemingly immutable 90 degree angle of the longeron was dissipating, I felt that I had to at least make an appearance at the hangar today. Having a fresh look at the plans might also serve to build a more complete mental image of the steps involved in finishing my first longeron.

Be careful what you ask for, or so they say. It took only moments to realize that the angle that I had opened on the end of the longeron was complete in that it was the required 95.4 degrees (strikingly similar to the ambient heat index, as it transpires, but those are different types of degrees), but stunningly incomplete in its length. I had successfully opened a two inch length to 95.4 degrees, leaving only another dozen or so inches to go. I had been visualizing this opening as something that was needed only at the far extremity of the longeron; such is not the case. It actually needs to go 12 11/16" inches down the length. So, back in the vise went the longeron, and the steel coupling was called back into play.

You may recall that I had also brought the big mallet into the mix by using it to pound on the handle of the vise to force the jaws of the vice to close on the coupling, thereby spreading open the angle on the longeron. I started doing that again, but soon realized that I needed a more refined and humane method. I also realized that I needed to better protect the vertex edge of the longeron. I put the longeron between two pieces of scrap wood to protect it. As can be seen, there are tremendous forces at work here, and the wood wasn't really up to the task.

In fact, it split apart with a sharp "BANG!" and flew high up into the air, almost reaching the ceiling of the hangar.

I needed a new method of getting a lot of leverage to apply force to the vise. I put the vise handle through the open hole in the end of my big adjustable wrench.

I decided that a thicker piece of scrap wood might be a better buffer and be less likely to get decapitated when the going got tough. Using the wrench, I was able to get a lot more force onto the vise without the brutish and somewhat uncontrollable mallet.

All was going well in getting the angle to open, but there was a little unwanted bending going on as well.

Once I had the full length of angle opened up, I turned the longeron around in the vice and took the unwanted bend back out of it by bending it.

There it is, ready for the next step.

In theory, by having opened the 90 degree angle to 95.4 degrees, I would have imparted an unwanted 2.7 degree angle to both of the sides. No one cares about the vertical side, apparently, but the horizontal (top) side needs to be flush the length of the longeron. To fix that, a "metric crescent wrench" (as called for in the plans) is used to twist the 2.7" out of the top and therefore put the entire 5.4 degrees on the side. Now, there's no such thing as a metric crescent wrench, what with them being infinitely adjustable in both SAE and metric sizes, and any other size you might come up with. So it must be a joke put there by Van's.

Tell me, do I look like I'm in the mood for a joke?

Fortunately, the 2.7 degree bend was very easy to make, even with my Harbor Freight faux-SAE crescent wrench. Yes, that's a joke. I guess I was in the mood after all. Go figure.

It was finally time for The Big Bend. Which reminds me of something that happened at dinner when I was up at Oshkosh. The Jackson Two had come down to where we were staying in West Bend to have a nice dinner. I knew of a place right on the banks of the river where we could sit out on the patio and have the river as a nice background for our meal. The question came up as to just what the name of the river we were sitting by was. I replied that it must be the Milwaukee River. A woman at the next table over interjected with the comment that if it was, in fact, the Milwaukee River, then said river must take a bend that she was unaware of. I replied that I not only guessed that the river did  take a bend, but went a step further and postulated that it very likely took a bend to the west. How ever did I arrive at that preposterous supposition, she wondered. I suggested that maybe, just maybe, that's where the name West Bend came from.

She had never thought of that, or so she said.

But back to The Big Bend. The idea here is that the longeron will provide support for the side skin where it of necessity ends its upward trek at the edge of the canopy. That area of the fuselage has a graceful outward bend to provide room for my bulky shoulders. The way to determine that the longeron is correctly bent is to use the canopy sill part as a template.

It took me awhile to figure out where exactly to position the template on the longeron. The line that I marked 'A' is at the end of the area where I had just finished opening the angle. There is another line marked as the 'START OF TEMPLATE', but the line drawn to show it was open to interpretation. Luckily, a measurement was also provided. If I am reading it correctly (and yes, there is still some doubt in my mind), the edge of the template should line up with a mark 1/4" (or 4/16" if you don't want to simply the resulting fraction arrived at by subtracting 12 7/16 from 12 11/16) from the 'A' mark. The drawing seemed to support that interpretation, so I made the mark and test fit the template.

You can see how much bend is going to be required.

The plans say that the part to be used as the template can be set aside and the opposite part used in its stead (albeit flipped upside down) if the original part doesn't work with the longeron in the vise. I could see that this was going to be the method I would need to use, but I figured that it would have to be done cautiously to avoid making the bend in the wrong direction. Visions of the shipping costs for having to order a replacement longeron sharpened my focus on this issue quite distinctly.  I carefully placed the opposing part, clearly marked with an 'R' to differentiate it from the 'L' piece that will eventually be riveted to this, the left, longeron in place.

The hash marks on the longeron are 1 inch apart. The idea is to clamp the longeron in the vise and apply some bend at each of the 1 inch marks until everything lines up with the template. The plans also warn that a vertical component can be introduced at the time of bending in the horizontal plane, and that one should be on the lookout for that and correct it when it happens. So, in the vise with it, and start bending. The plans suggest checking the bend against the template early and often to ensure that one isn't actually over-bending the longeron. If one is very, very careful, it is possible to match the curvature of the template very precisely. Which it appeared that I had done a simply admirable job of. Still, it's not official until the longeron is matched with the real template, not the inverted stand-in. Which I did.

Only to find that I had very precisely matched the inverse of the bend. Merde! How could I have bent the thing backwards?? Well, simple really. I had neglected to mark the front and rear of the template, and I had managed to use it backwards.

As it turns out, if one is motivated enough, the longeron bending can be very carefully reversed and re-accomplished in the correct direction.  If anything, it turned out even better the second time.

It seemed prudent at this point to forgo the pleasure of doing the right side longeron. I've been disciplining myself into cleaning a new portion of the hangar every time I go out there, so I decided I'd do a little shop-vac cleaning and call it a day. The target area was the back corner of the hangar where the crickets like to gather. My friendly bird hadn't come back, and I could hear a new batch of the irritating buggers back there. The little fiends are clever - they hear me coming when I go hunting for them and quiet down until I give up and leave. They then chirp up (so that's where that expression comes from...) and call me insulting names.

Well, the joke's on them. While evolutionary adaptation has taught them to be quiet when an irate human comes after them, their species has apparently failed to adapt quickly enough to recognize the danger of the shop-vac. It sucked up a good half dozen of them. I'm just crazy enough to laugh out loud when I hear them chirping away inside the belly of the vacuum. In fact, one could be forgiven for saying that I have crickets in my canister!

Cricket problem solved

Ever since I've been working on the plane out in the hangar, I've been plagued by two things: recalcitrant longerons that have to date proven impervious to every manner of force I've been able to apply in trying to get the angle to open to an apparently unattainable 5.4 degrees, and even more annoying, a cricket in the back corner, hidden behind some piles of detritus that somehow landed in my hangar on moving day seven years ago. I figured the longeron problem was solvable (others have, after all, managed to get it done) but the cricket problem seemed hopeless. He'd go quiet as soon as I got near enough to pinpoint his location, and even had I been able to lay my eyes on him, they're nimble little critters and very hard to catch. Well, let's not dance around the issue; I didn't want to catch him, I wanted to flatten him under the bottom of my shoe.

I stopped by Lowe's after work to look into some of the options available for working on the longerons. I ended up buying a 4 lb. engineer's hammer, thinking someone as smart as an engineer could surely craft a more suitable pounding device than the ridiculous orange monstrosity I had picked up at Harbor Freight. Then I realized that they probably meant a train engineer's hammer, but it didn't matter. It felt much heftier than the orange one. Both are ostensibly 4 lbs. and even given that all sizes and weights of Harbor Freight tools are approximate, the metal engineer's hammer felt much, much heavier. To hedge my bets, I also found a 3/8" steel pipe coupling to use in case the new hammer failed as spectacularly as every hammer that has preceded it has. I even remembered to pick up a length of poly rope to practice tying sailing knots with.

I only forgot one thing: cricket poison.

Back at the hangar, I pounded futilely on the longeron piece which was snuggled under the protective umbrella of the scrap piece that I had cut off earlier. This was a healthy dose of "fail," and it certainly didn't help my mood that the noise of the pounding didn't even cover the mocking chirps of the dratted cricket. Fail, fail, FAIL! I'm started to believe that the problem is not with the hammer; I think it is the resilience of the wooden top of the workbench. It was absorbing all of the energy.

Humbled by my inability to make even the least bit of progress on the longeron and getting pretty close to going absolutely homicidal on that accursed cricket, I decided to try the vise/pipe coupling method. If that didn't work, well, I'd just go home and mow the yard. Here's the set-up:

The coupling. Naturally since it was Lowe's, it was nowhere near where it should have been on the shelf if they were using any numbering system familiar to an inhabitant of planet Earth, but at least it was in a bag with a bar code on it so they'd know the price of it at the checkout. The odds against that are so high that I can't fathom them. Someone must have snuck it in from Home Depot.

Being a bit shy about experimenting with the long longeron piece, I tried the short sacrificial piece first. With everything in place, I cranked and cranked and cranked on the vise until I could crank no more.  I took the part out, measured it against the angle measuring doohickey, and found that with my extreme efforts I had managed to successfully preserve a pristine 90 degree angle.

That was it. The big guns were coming out. One. More. Try. I put the coupling and the scrap back in the vise, cranked and cranked and cranked until I could crank no more. Then I took the bright neon orange mallet and whacked the hell out of the vise cranky thingy. Again. And again. And again. Then I took the scrap out and measured it against the 95.4 angle on the angle measuring doohickey:

SUCCESS!!

As I was patting myself on the back (figuratively) and enjoying (somewhat) the enthusiastic cheering of the cricket, I noticed that I had an audience. I had almost stepped on a robin. She was completely unafraid of me and hopped around behind me, watching what I was doing. I tried shooing her out a few times, but she'd just go sit under a workbench or the big toolbox until I stopped, then come out again. I decided to ignore her and deal with evicting her later.

Back to work, I loaded up the longeron for the angle-opening process.

I went through the same cranking, cranking, cranking, pounding, whacking, beating process again. It was hard to see if I was making progress without having to remove the longeron from the vise, so I just measured with the piece of scrap to see how much progress I had made.

I finished up the longeron and decided to call it quits for the night. Emotionally drained and a little tired of the longeron bending, I did some work on the fuel system that I had discussed with loyal reader Joe from Utah.  That wasn't much fun either and when I finally got it done and realized that I was drenched in sweat, I decided to finish up and head home. All that was left to do was round up the robin and herd her out of the hangar.

She was nowhere to be found. And as I was looking for her behind boxes and under tables and failing to find her anywhere, I realized something.

The chirping of the cricket had stopped.

I hope she enjoyed the meal.

Culminations and Beginnings

It finally happened. I reached the inevitable culmination of the period of time that I will be able to build the RV-12 in my basement. I stretched it out as far as I could by doing the rudder pedals and fuel lines before section 23, but those are both done now. Section 23 is the beginning of a new phase of building, where of a necessity everything will be done in the hangar. It wasn't a completely painless transition; a lot of tools and partially completed pieces of airplane, along with the very long wing spars, had to be loaded up and moved. It turns out that the fuselage section will fit nicely in the back of a Toyota Tundra, but the wings spars not so much. The spars aren't heavy, but they're a pain to move because they're unwieldy and don't balance the way you think they will. There is definitely a heavy end.


A lot of rearranging and housecleaning (I've been in that hangar for a decade - stuff piles up) was required in the hangar to make room for everything and spiffy it up to make it a more pleasant environment. All in all, I think I spent two or three days getting fully situated.

I've also been dreading the beginning of section 23 because it starts with forming the longerons. A longeron is:

In aircraft construction, a longeron is a thin strip of wood, metal or carbon fiber, to which the skin of the aircraft is fastened. Longerons are attached to formers (also called frames), in the case of the fuselage, or ribs in the case of a wing, or empennage. In very early aircraft, a fabric covering was sewn to the longerons, and then stretched tight by painting it with dope, which would make the fabric shrink, and become stiff.

Longerons often carry larger loads than stringers and also help to transfer skin loads to internal structure. As stated above longerons nearly always attach to frames or ribs. But stringers often are not attached to anything but the skin, where they perform the duty of preventing the skin from deforming, which would create stress risers that would destroy the structural integrity of the monocoque. It is not uncommon to have a mixture of longerons and stringers in the same major structural component.

Sure, whatever. On an RV-12, there is one longeron per side, and it has to follow the curvature of the fuselage as it bends around the cockpit. It is fashioned from a straight piece of angle aluminum. Thousands of words have been written about the difficulties in fashioning longerons, so as I am the first in line to put off something I don't really want to do, I found a different way to occupy myself for a couple of days.

That story starts way back before I started building the RV-12. I needed a smaller project to test my mettle. Hours and hours went into deciding what to build, dozens of blog postings were written as I searched far and wide for a suitable project, and I eventually landed on the idea of building a kayak. I don't remember how long it took to build, but it was probably five or six months. It turned out pretty well, in my opinion.

It's great for paddling down the Big Darby, but I eventually got it in my head that I'd like to be able to go to other places. The Darby is close by and it was easy to have someone help load the boat onto the car, drop me off at the river, and pick me up downstream a few hours later. Going further away was more difficult in that I needed someone to go with me, but no one would want to sit around for a few hours while I was out paddling around. I solved that problem by buying another kayak. 

That worked out well, but I've recently had a relapse. I've always liked sailing, and having experienced the effort required to traverse a large reservoir paddling against the wind, I decided I'd rather have the wind as a friend rather than an enemy. I rekindled my interest in sailing. I managed to catch a healthy dose of 'want' for a sailboat. It's not exactly out of the blue; it's just been lying dormant for a few years. Meanwhile, neither kayak has seen the water this year. I decided to sell the kayaks and buy a sailboat. That was only a temporary decision, lasting only as long as it took for me to realize that I couldn't part with the boat that I had built. I set my sights a little lower and decided to sell just the guest kayak and see how much sailboat that I could buy with the proceeds. I thought it would be easy since I only want a simple boat that I can rig in just a few minutes and sail by myself.

And so it transpired that I sold the kayak Friday evening, and went to look at a potential sailboat on Saturday afternoon. The boat I went to look at is a Force 5. It's less that 14' long, can be rigged in just a few minutes, and can be sailed by a crew of me. The asking price was within budget too. What could go wrong?

Well, you know me. Plenty can go wrong! The seller had it all rigged and ready to go by the time I got to the reservoir. All we had to do was get the boat into the water. But rather than tow it up to the boat ramp to be launched, he suggested that we just carry it down to the water. I think that would have worked out okay except for one thing: there was a foot and a half step to go down. As we were bringing the boat down the step, he let it drop and there was a resounding 'CRACK" as the rudder split. 

I'll never forget what he said next. "Well, that was the product of a bad idea!"

The break in the rudder is nothing that can't be fixed, but there was also a little leakage around the tunnel the centerboard goes through. That too can be fixed with a little work, but I decided that I'm just not looking for a fixer-upper. I have longerons to bend, after all. He had another prospective buyer coming to look at it that might be more interested in doing the required repairs, so I just told him to go ahead with that deal. Meanwhile, I'm foraging around the house looking for other stuff to sell so I can afford a newer boat. I have my eye on this Zuma 13-footer up in Sandusky:

The seller hasn't gotten back to me with an answer to my question as to whether he has sold it yet or not, and I'm not in a terrific hurry anyway since my new trailer hitch for our Subaru still needs to be delivered and installed.

That leaves me with no options but to start on the longerons. As I mentioned, there have been thousands or words written about easier ways to do the longerons than the method provided in the build manual, but I want to at least try the Van's way first. The first step looked easy: measure and cut the provided angle aluminum to 82 3/8" (I think - I'm going from memory on that). Well, that really was easy. Tape measure, band saw.

The mathematicians in the crowd will have noticed that I put my mark at the 84 3/8" mark. I do that because I start my measurement at the other end at the two inch mark. It's more reliable that way because of the folding claw thingy on the other end of the tape measure.

The next step is so easy that one begins to wonder what all of the fuss was about. All you have to do is measure and mark some spots on the longeron that will be used as start and stop marks for certain bends and twists. One suspects that it is the bends and twists that cause all of the heartache. 

One suspects correctly.

In any event, I measured and marked.

Then we come to the innocuous direction, "Open the angle of the longeron an shown." What is shown is that I need to open the 90 degree angle to 95.4 degrees. Heh, only 5.4 degrees. A pittance. The method shown looks easy enough: just put the angle on the work bench with the open end down and whack it with a rubber mallet. Continue whacking until you have opened the angle a measly 5.4 degrees. What could be easier? I set my angle measuring doohickey to somewhere in the neighborhood of 95.4 degrees and put it on the angle to see how far I would have to whack.

Okay, then, start the whacking!

I pounded and pounded and pounded. Then I measured again.

This continued for half an hour. No progress whatsoever. I really wanted this to work, mostly because the PSTRV had stated unequivocally that this method works. Perhaps, I thought, the problem was that I was only using a 2 lb. hammer. Maybe I just needed more mass. More velocity would work too, but I was already giving it all I had. Nothing for it but a trip to Harbor Freight. Wearing that shirt. A trip that would be fraught with peril, what with me being dressed like a cabana boy. 


Harbor Freight had a 4 lb. mallet on sale, and no one even noticed my shirt. Somewhat rebuffed, I had to revert to calling attention to it myself. As I was at the checkout counter, I told the girl running the register that today was my lucky day because I had begun to despair that I would never be able to find a hammer that matched my shirt.


So it was back to whacking on the longeron, but this time I was able to double the force applied on each whack.

See what I mean about matching my shirt? What an amazingly gauche color for a hammer! (Looks good on a shirt, though, right?)

I pounded and pounded and pounded. Then I pounded some more. I thought that surely I had made some progress, so I reset the angle measuring doohickey to 90 degrees to check my progress.

Progress = 0.0.  Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Bupkus. A complete goose egg. In other words, the PATRV is either superhuman or wrong. This method doesn't work. Oh, I supposed I could keep trying bigger hammers. But I think instead that I will try some of the suggestions provided by others that have been though this.

I also had a hard time getting the 90 degree angle on the end of the longeron to open up- the soft hammer method simple didn't budge it. Here's what I wound up doing: step 1. Take the ten inch or so piece that you cut off the longeron to trim it to length and place it over the angle that you want to open up (this will protect the longeron from the next step) Step 2. I used a short 3# sledge hammer to beat directly on to the scrap piece on top of the longeron (as an anvil, I placed the longeron on top of my table saw cast iron top). You will really have to apply some force to get it to budge, but the srap piece will keep it from being otherwise deformed.

 I'm not too keen on that idea, and not just because I'd have to buy another hammer. It seems almost too brute force. And there would seem to be some risk involved. It wouldn't be hard to destroy the aluminum. I'm going to keep that idea in reserve and try this one first:

I used a 3/4 inch pipe coupling inside of the angle and squeezed it with a vice. Check it with a square and there should be about 1/16 of inch gap at the vertex.

That idea has a problem too in that it is contingent on finding a 3/4 inch pipe coupling. I'll try Lowe's for that.

I'm stuck for now, but I will stop by Lowe's tomorrow to look for a piece of pipe. I've been wanting to stop by there anyway in order to pick up a couple of lengths of rope so I can start practicing sailing knots. 

It's a beginning.