Wednesday March 12, 2008
Fuel Tank Stiffener Fabrication (Fuel Tanks)
1.2 Hours

Again, I haven't remembered to get the battery for my camera charging, so I don't have any pictures. Fortunately, my activity last night wasn't something exciting. I simply fabricated all of the stiffeners for the fuel tank I've been working on. These stiffeners are basically thin aluminum angle pieces that get riveted to the bottom of the tank to give it additional rigidity when a few hundred pounds of fuel are resting on it.

Vans gives you a 4' long strip of the angle that contains 5 of the stiffeners in one contiguous piece. They punch little holes in the edges to indicate where to cut to form the individual pieces--think connect the dots. I used my tin snips to cut the stiffeners out of the aggregate, then smoothed things out on my bench grinder. Finally, I took some Emery cloth to the edges, by hand, to finish them off.

This is easy stuff, I've done it so many times before on this project.

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