Bending Longerons 2 - 02/04/2013

Step 2 : bending the shallow cruve on the longeron around the aft canopy deck part F-721B

In this step, I am making the bend along the af canopy deck that starts from 38" 7/16 and 69" 9/32 according to the markings we have made earlier.

I will be using the bending dies purchased from Buller Enterprises.

I marked the spar with a vertical line at every inch. These will be used to center the spar in the dies.

( update : 1 inch is a bit too narrow actually. If you use 2 or even 3 inch, it works as good and you will get less marking on the longerons. I only found out doing the second one.)

Then center the longeron with the marking on the die and make sure the die blocks are aligned.

Put the dies in a vise and start turning. Don't close the dies completely ! The dies allow for over bending and spring back correction.

So only close the gap between the dies half way through.

I make a reference to that because I actually overbent it quite a bit on mine and had to push back. It's always better if you can avoid this.

Bend a little at a time and compare often to the template on DWG-11. I attached DWG 11 to a cardboard.

The longeron should be with 1/16" from the template and lay flat on the surface withing 1/16".

I'm close, but it needs some more fine tuning.

Anal as I'm being about this, I'll continue bending in the next sessions to try to get it as close as possible.


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