Dremeled and Drilled Frame

I started off the day by repeating some of the silicone exercise from yesterday for a pair of panels on the rear skins (the panels not included as part of the back door).

Next, I Dremeled out a few areas of the frame, specifically the rib supporting bottom of the coin slots (shown here), the rib above the front power coupling (not visible from this angle), and the area above the shoulder (seen in the next picture).



Finally, I made one of the cuts I had been putting off for as long as possible, due to my fear of messing it up. This was the drilling of the holes in the shoulder planks that the gas pipe connecting the two legs passes through. As far as I can tell, the holes line up just fine, but I won't know for sure until I connect the legs. The gas pipe needs to be cut down a bit too. The other hole that's visible is for electrical wires to pass through the shoulder and on down the legs to the feet.



By the way, yesterday's white paint test didn't turn out as robust as I had hoped. I was able to peel the paint and primer off the aluminum fairly easily with my finger nail. The paint did not come off the primer; rather, the primer and paint came off together from the aluminum. I did not prep the aluminum other than cleaning it with acetone. I hope to try a couple of experiments tomorrow, one with a different primer, the other with a light sanding and cleaning of the aluminum before applying the same primer as yesterday. We'll see how that goes...