Spinner Done, Starting Cowling

Back at after 10 days out of town. With the help of buddy Craig, we removed the prop. This served a couple purposes. First, I could remove the rear spinner bulkhead and easily drill, countersink and rivet in the nut plates around the perimeter. I also got the gap fillers riveted on after sanding them smooth using filler primer and 320 paper. The final task was sanding the rear edge of the spinner flush with the bulkhead. Craig and I decided to use tooling in place of the prop and spinner bulkhead to fit the cowling. Others have taken that approach. After measuring carefully and using CAD, Craig designed an analog to the prop bulkhead out of Lexan that will bolt to the crankshaft flange. I can then cleco the top cowling directly to it and it should provide the proper offset and gap needed for spinner clearance and engine settling in its mounts. And because I can cleco the cowling to it I get precision repeatability when I remove and replace the cowling many times during the fitment process. Not having the prop and flywheel in the way is a bonus too. Tooling should be ready in 4-5 days. In the meantime, I've gotten to work cutting all the hinges to length and creating the pins that will join the hinge halves. Best of all SteinAir called and said my panel was ready for shipment. The sent a few photos with it powered up and I'm very pleased with how it looks. Serious eye candy. It's pretty standard in terms of avionics. I wasn't trying to re-invent the wheel. It's been shipped and will be here soon. Looking forward to getting it mounted and powered up.