Yup, more fine-tuning. Tonight I decided to lay out and drill all the attach holes. Straightforward work; I located the end holes, figured out rough hole spacing, and use the rivet fan to drill the remainder if the pilot holes to #40. Then I got the bottom in place on the rudder and match-drilled using the pilot holes through the attach strip (plus one hole on each side through the rudder horn brace, to secure the forward corner of the glass piece),.
With the holes done, the alignment between the edges of the fairing and the rudder skin were set; I ended up doing a bit of fine-tuning on these, going through several iterations of removing the fairing, sanding the edge down a bit, and re-checking. In the end I had a pretty even gap all around, unless you look really close. At a distance, nobody’s ever going to notice anything:
With the bottom now clecoed in place, it was time to revisit the cutout around the control horn. I used a piece of 1/8” bar stock to lay a new clearance line around the horn, then got to sanding again:
Finally, after all that work, I think I’ve got this thing shaped up like I want it. I think it finally really is time to get that bulkhead piece epoxied in place to close out the forward end…next time. This was enough for one night.