I can't put it off forever, so more cowl work today. Putting the top back on, of course it doesn't fit the same way it did before. Part of that is my mistake - I should have left it on while trimming and fitting the lower cowl. I thought my jig would be good enough to hold everything in position, but now with both on, the top cowl doesn't set at quite the same angle as before (because of how it fits the bottom cowl at the nose). The right side at the fuselage line is fine, but the left side will probably need some additional fiberglass work to extend the edge a little.
I continued to slowly shape the nose, although a rough fit is about all I can hope for right now. Once I get the whole setup in place on the fuselage, then I will do all of the finish work.
You can see just how off all the basic shape is. The front of the cowls at the spinner aren't vertical. I guess I'll have to sand and fill the nose bowl area to make it parallel to the spinner.
Here's the left side of the top cowl. This fit perfectly without the bottom cowl on, but now since the front doesn't set down on the bottom cowl very well, the rear is pulled away. I will chip away at the front to let the top set lower and pivot the aft edge back, but I don't know that I can do it enough to close the gap completely. I'll likely need to add on some fiberglass to extend the edge a bit. I didn't get a picture of it, but I also cut the top edge of the bottom cowl so it would mate up with the horizontal edge of the top cowl.
All of that doesn't seem like much, but took most of the day. On the fuselage side of the cowls, the last thing I need to do is create the attachment for the bottom. Van's calls out screws and nutplates for this area, but I chose to go with Skybolt quarter turn fasteners instead. Much more expensive, but also much more convenient. Half of the Skybolt is riveted to the fuselage ledge (on the bottom of the firewall), and then a quarter turn screw goes through the fiberglass. I laid out all of the locations and drilled the holes for the Skybolts. I started riveting them in place, but after messing up about 50% of the rivets, I decided to call it for the day. The rivet holes in the Skybolts are super close to the barrel, making it very difficult to get a squeezer or bucking bar on them.
