For real this time, it’s done.
To start off with tonight, I decided to try making a new support angle out of sheet stock, hoping that with a tighter corner bend, I could get away with locating it a bit lower. But after doing a test fit, during which I marked the rivet hole locations, it was pretty clear that those holes would be really difficult to dimple. So instead, I decided to investigate the possibility of simply adding a bend to my cover plate. I was able to conclusively measure the required offset, which turned out to be only a hair over 1/8”.
Based on the space I had outboard of the quadrant cutout, I figured I could make my bend without moving the outboard edge inboard too far. So I clecoed the cover plate in place, then clecoed the angle to the side skin, and traced the edge of the angle on the cover plate. This would be my outboard bend line. Then I drew a straight line aligned with the outboard edge of the quadrant cutout line; this would be the inboard bend line.
Making the first bend was pretty easy I just clamped two pieces of scrap wood at the line and pressed against the workbench to get the slight bend I was looking for. Making the second bend was less fun, as there was only about 1/2” between the two. I ended up clamping the whole assembly in the vice and carefully tapping the bend line with a piece of wood and a hammer until everything looked good. This didn’t get me the same crisp bend as the first one, but oh well. Some fine-tuning with the hand seamers, and it was time for a test fit. And it worked great!
That still left the issue of drilling the three screw holes to attach to the mount angle. I prefer to drill stuff like this in assembly, but it simply wasn’t possible here. Instead, with the angle clecoed to the side skin, I measured the distance from the side skin to each hole center, then marked the centerline of each hole on the skin. Once I had the cover plate in place, I transferred the lines from the side skin to the plate, then measured out from the skin to mark the center lines. I was a little worried about things not lining up, but it ended up fitting nicely. (well, after a few more rounds of tweaking the plate to get a nice snug fit to the quadrant itself)
Close-up look at the bend:
Boy, am I glad to be done with this. Now to resume tearing everything apart and getting some prep work done. I haven’t even looked at the instructions in weeks!