Yes, I made a banana

Well, after getting all the crossmembers and firewall in place, I stood back and discovered a real banana fuse. A little (liveable) twist by the tail, but at the cockpit about 1/2 in out.

Back to the drawing board - marked all the crossmembers at the centerline, pulled a piece of dental floss from the centerline of the firewall across all the crossmembers and back to the tail. NOT a pretty picture.

Took a cut off wheel and the Dremel and cut off all the crossmembers and braces.

THIS time I'm going to mark a centerline on the plans, put them on my worktable and screw some blocks to the outline of the fuse at the crossmember location. That will get the bottom lined up. For the top I can turn it over since the fuse is symetrical. Some weights to hold the fuse to the table ( I was also thinking of using those clamps you put on 1/4" tubing when you do swamp cooler lines) would probably work to hold it real firmly in place.

I guess the basic problem is that I'm used to working with balsa and using hardwood dowels (with their built-in warps) instead requires a much firmer jig than pins and eyeballs. Well, nothing wasted but about a day of time and a dollar in dowels.

NOTE: One interesting thing about the dowels is that they don't suck up much glue because of their tight grain structure. It was relatively easy to break apart the frame without destroying it. Anywhere where the dowel wasn't sanded the epoxy (30 min) didn't really stick all that well. Must be some sort of wax coating on it. BUT to be honest, I did heat it up while using the abrasive wheel and the joints that did separate easily really didn't have that much surface are except for the gussets I put on the sides of the joints. The cross member dowels usually broke cleanly away from the epoxy in both the joint and from the gusset. I'll have to make sure there's a clean surface this time.

Back to the workbench - learning all the time!!!