Skidplate Fabrication Part 1

Page 10-3 has us fabricating a skid plate by taking a section of extruded aluminum, cutting several pieces off of the extrusion, and threading the center hole with a 3/8" tap.  Funny that they would call it a skid plate, since the part will never touch the ground.  But it will provide a place to screw in an eyelet bolt to be used as a rear tie-down point.  I suppose if you were to really over-rotate on landing or take off the eyelet bolt could scrape the runway, but airplanes aren't normally flown that way (sure would wake you up if you did).  Still, it's good to have because eyelet bolts are cheap and easy to replace, whereas runway rash on the rear bottom skins, well, I don't even want to think about what a PITA how difficult that would be to repair.

 Here's the [mostly] unmolested piece with a cut mark on it:

And here it is after a little band saw surgery:

The next couple steps use the drill press, band saw (again), and scotchbrite wheel on the bench grinder to remove additional material at the bottom (right), and to grind out a notch in the side, as shown:

A thin aluminum template is used to locate the notch and drill the first two of 16 rivet holes.  Here's an important builder tip for drilling those first two rivet holes:  After drilling the first rivet hole, cleco the template to the skid plate using that hole.  Guess what happens if you don't.  That's right, your second hole may end up in the wrong location.  Using the magic of Photoshop <not>, here's what that would look like ('cause I would never do anything that stupid):

So remember, cleco the template with that first hole.  You might even consider drilling just one of those two rivet holes now, and the rest when the plate is on the bulkhead.  Cleco each as you go.  That will allow you to precisely center the bottom part of the skid plate (with the threaded hole) between the doubler plate flanges on the bottom of the bulkhead.  Be sure the notch position is okay before you start drilling.