Fabricate custom floor skin CF-SKN-011

I was shipped a CF-SKN-011-C-A-1 floor skin rather then the C-A-2 indicated in my packing list. The front of the C-A-1 is slightly narrower at the front, about 6.5mm each side. This creates a gap between the side flanges and the side skins which I originally planned to fill with shimming. About 3mm thickness of metal would have been needed at the front of the flange tapering to no thickness at the rear. I planned to make a set of stacked leaves of thinner sheet to create this shim. All of this is hidden from view by the interior skin and otherwise hole alignment was good.

Sling did offer to supply a replacement skin (great service), but I wanted to avoid the inevitable multi-week wait time owing to the size of the container, and possible costs.

I noted the wing step-on skins is made from 0.8mm sheet while this floor skin, including the latest revision are only 0.5mm and I wondered whether it would be a good move to thicken this skin to the 0.8mm level to make it more resistant to concentrated loads. My plan is to stand on this floor as much as possible when embarking or disembarking rather than standing on the nice leather seats! Other builders have considered this question from various points of view.

Since I was ordering sheet for the bottom skin and with shipping being a dominant cost, I also ordered 0.8mm 6061-T6 sheet to fabricate a CF-SKN-011-C-A-2 myself with some dimensional information given by Sling. I would use the original C-A-1 skin as a hole template. I would also drill only those holes as were needed for my toe-brake configuration. The Sling supplied floor skins have many additional holes as they are a universal part, useable also for the non toe-brake configuration.