Gear Towers

Count today as a few hours of work with zero real progress.  Although, if taking steps backwards is progress, I suppose I made tons of it.  Today was a day for catching up on house chores, so I figured I'd just do a couple of small tasks on the plane.  The gear legs need to be fit into the gear towers and the upper bolt hole through the parts reamed to size.  The left side slid right into place and was finished in a matter of minutes.  The right side took a little more persuasion to get it 99% in place, but nothing I could do would get it the last 1/16".  So now the issue is of course getting it back out so I can clean it up a bit more and try again!  After an hour of trying to get it to pop loose, I gave up.  I tried heating the tower, using penetrating spray, pounding on it with a hammer.  So far nothing has even budged it.  I'll have to rig it up in the vice somehow and pull out a sledge.  The tower is such an awkward shape that I don't know how I'll hold it in place though.

Since I couldn't get the right side finished, I thought I'd bolt the left tower into place.  This is one of those times where I really want to yell at the engineer who drew up the drawings.  I made the floor stiffeners the exact size they said to.  What they failed to point out is that one of the arms of the gear tower has to fit between the stiffener and the bulkhead web.  Trimming 1/16" off the end of the stiffener is going to be a nightmare at this point.  It's too close to the bulkhead to fit any kind of a saw or cutoff disc, and even if I could, the last thing I want to do is nick this bulkhead (it's the wing spar carry through).  So somehow I have to figure out a way to take off some material from the stiffener.  I have no idea how I'll manage that.