Frustrating evening. Last night, I cut to size and marked-up the 3/4" thick phenolic blocks for the fairleads. Started drilling tonight. Initial pilot to #40 went well. Hmmm... not too bad. Took them up to 1/8". All went OK. Then started the partial drill-up to 1/4". This hole is to provide relief to allow a CCP-46 rivet to be used to attach the blocks to the vertical channels. As such, the 1/4" portion of the hole only goes 1/2" into the block.
This is where it went bad. Took things slow, because I noticed that if I rushed things with the #40 or #30 drills, the blocks would start smoking and start to bind up. The drill then started to bind. 3 out of 4 blocks had at least one hole too deep, such that there would not be enough block left to support a rivet. (See pic 1 below).
Only had a 25% success rate. One out of the 4 blocks was successful (pic 2). Phone call to Wicks to order new block.
Moved on to the next vertical channel pieces, SNX-F27-04. Did -R tonight. Spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what the plans were trying to tell me - was hard to tell if the channel aspect was facing the reader or away from the reader in the plans. The use of the channel as depicted in SNX-F25 made sense, but did not appear to match the plans. Finally dawned on me which were the visible angles/edges of the channel, and which were occluded. Proceeded to markup and pilot drill the channel. Final drilled the 3/4" and 5/16" holes for trim & rudder cables.
