The Pedal Gee Bee

Time spent: 2.5 hours (evening)

I’ve spent a many a sleepless night fretting over how round the firewall and nose plate are going to wind up. I mean, if they’re out of round or the holes are not to center after I’ve sanded it round there’s no way, geometrically speaking, I can wind up with a round cowl. Not good on a Gee Bee. That’s what makes this aircraft special. The nose needs to be perfectly round and bulbous to work.

So I bought a Jasper 230 circle jig for my router. I really wanted the model 200, but Woodcraft didn’t have it. Oh well. This thing is SO COOL! I found myself trying to come up with reasons to cut more circles. Anyone need some round end tables? Some speaker enclosures perhaps?

In any event, I wound up re-cutting the firewall (6), a firewall doubler ring, nose plate (8), and the pushrod spacers (13). The later of which I cut as a complete circle rather than in three segments. While the first versions of the parts (which I had finished before) were extremely close to round, the process of rounding them had migrated the previously drilled holes relative to the completed circle. I’m glad I re-cut them at a cost of a quarter sheet of 3/8ths and an hour so of work.