Well it was time to bend the longerons finally. I didn't find them that easy or difficult, just time consuming and tedious. The first shallow bend took me 3 hours and a few choice words, the next one was half of that!
First I put the shallow bends in the longerons, the picture below shows both longerons clamped together after the bend. The trickiest part of almost anything to do with the longerons is that when you bend it one way it usually bends in an undesirable way too (which must be corrected).
20180615_182052 by
Jereme Carne, on Flickr
Next the aft canopy deck goes on and gets drilled to the longerons. The front of the top flange lines up with the 28.25" mark. You also use some scrap 0.032" to simulate the side skins as the canopy deck sits on top.
20180615_183554 by
Jereme Carne, on Flickr
All drilled and matches up nicely. I would also add that before you drill the canopy deck that you debur the outside edge as it sits on top of the side skin and deburing after may ruin this fit to a very small degree.
20180616_175849 by
Jereme Carne, on Flickr
Next was on to the downward bend. A little math will make life easy! I found it difficult to reliably measure the deflection as things move as you whack it. Therefore, with a little bit of math I found that 5.5 degrees of deflection over 28.25" will yield pretty dang close to the 2.75" the plans call for. After the bend I held it up to the forward side skins and it matches it almost exactly! Looks like I don't have to embarrass myself after all with my math, especially since I'm a math teacher.
(ugh, after looking at the plans again it has this angle on it! haha they call for 5.6 degrees, live and learn)
20180616_205721 by
Jereme Carne, on Flickr
Measurement on top where there is no bend.
20180616_205547 by
Jereme Carne, on Flickr
Measurement of the forward bend deflection.
20180616_205557 by
Jereme Carne, on Flickr
This is what I used to clamp the longerons into place, worked really well!
20180616_205746 by
Jereme Carne, on Flickr
Next was onto the twist. First I measured where there is no twist.
20180616_210410 by
Jereme Carne, on Flickr
After applying the twist you get your 17 degrees. You have to really get after it to make this twist!!! The aluminum really springs back a lot.
20180616_210444 by
Jereme Carne, on Flickr