Not a good day

Not entirely – it actually started off pretty well. I got an invoice this morning for my new radio and transponder that included a credit for the ATR833S radio that I returned a couple of weeks or so ago, so I did an immediate transfer of funds to the supplier’s bank account and now, although it hasn’t yet been confirmed, I assume that the kit is winging its way to me.

But from then on it all went downhill, as I’ll explain. Today was the day for starting on the new panel fabrication work, namely cutting it out and cutting the first few holes for the gauges. I don’t have all of the hole cutters that I need but at least I could do the 80mm and 57m diameter ones. Cutting the panel itself out of the 100cm x 25cm sheet that I ordered went well just using a jig saw with a fine blade but problems began when I started on the hole cutting.

Firstly, although I clamped the panel down, cutting the holes using a hand-held drill just isn’t good enough. It didn’t help that I omitted to centre-punch the centre of each gauge hole to make sure that the holes were exactly positioned and one of them is slightly out. Not by much but enough for me to notice. But in any case, the hole cutters always move sufficiently to make each hole oversize.

I’m also now thinking that it was a bad idea buying a pre-lacquered sheet. The reason is that the plastic film that protects the lacquered face melts when you are drilling and you end up with holes with messy edges. Until the job’s finished and I remove the plastic I won’t know how good or bad the holes actually are, but quite honestly, it’s not worth the extra expense and bother of working with a sheet of pre-painted aluminium.

Another consideration is that when you cut a hole, it ends up with bare metal inner edges. These won’t be seen if your holes are cut with enough precision for the gauges to fit tightly in them, but that’s not the case. So long as the extent to which they are oversize is not too great, if you then sprayed the panel yourself the edges would be covered making them far less noticeable but again, I’ll have to wait and see how the panel turns out in order to judge its appearance.

Here’s a shot of where I got to today.

All in all, I was very disappointed with today’s progress. I’ll press on now I’ve started but I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll use this version as a learning tool and then buy another sheet of bare aluminium to see if I can do better. But it won’t be for a few days, because the other thing that happened is that I succeeded in burning out my old Black and Decker mains electric drill. And I’ve got a constant reminder because the smell was surprisingly intense and seems to have penetrated my clothes so I can’t get rid of it even hours afterwards.

I’ve ordered a modern, more powerful, replacement (the old one was only 500 watts) but as usual, it’ll be several days before it’s delivered. No point trying to buy it locally because of the time you lose trawling around the shops who always end up not having exactly what you want in stock even though they say they have, and then paying 20% more for it. Luckily, I’m expecting the Savannah’s new carb intake rubbers to arrive tomorrow, so the time waiting for the new drill won’t be wasted.