Hat section in fuel bay.

[DesertBearhawk]

Can anyone give me some clue on how I would bend the fuel bay stiffeners. There has to be a trick!

[John Rheney]

Well, here is how I did it: http://home.mindspring.com/~rheney/html/stiffeners.html I think this may have been in the BearTracks at some point. My best advice, learned after riveting the first set to the skin, is to take your time and make them fit as perfectly as you can. I ended up drilling out the stiffeners on the first wing and re-working them for a better fit. Pay special attention to make sure the flanges lay flat against the wing skin to avoid 'crimping' the skin to fit the stiffener when it is riveted. All this means you need to have the skins clecoed to the ribs to adjust the shape of the stiffeners to fit well. I also used a little ProSeal between the stiffener and the wing skin to fill the micro-gaps and provide a bit more adhesion. Others may (probably) have better methods, but this does work if you take your time to do good work.

Dave, your work looks very good. I'm sure you will get this done to a high level!

Best,
John

[mswain]

Dave,

I asked the same question a while back, you can see the thread here: http://bearhawkforums.com/forum/bear...-fuel-tank-bay

I ended up reducing the angle to about 25 degrees and making the angled legs a bit longer, it was the only way I could make it work using the brakes I had access to....and it was still a pain. The press brake in my buddys shop wouldn't even work due to the width of the dies.

I made my tanks to plans but there is very little room, so the stiffeners I put on the tank cover are slightly less in overall height than what the plans call for (5/16). They are a tick smaller than .5 high. Only way I could get everything to fit.

Mike