Well, I have been procrastinating the fuel tank construction long enough.  For the most part, I have my landing light installed.  I have a few things that I need to do yet, but am waiting on parts.

I started building the tank by fabricating the tank attach angle (T-405).  The tank attach angle is fabricated from blank stock (AA6-187 x 2 x 2 1/2 x 12).  This is some heavy duty angle (as I found out trying to shape it).

For my first cut, I used the band saw.  Normally the band saw cuts through aluminum like a knife through warm butter, but not on this angle stock.  I had to exert some effort to feed this angle through.

Once I got it to the rough shape, I proceeded to the bench grinder and the scothbrite wheels.  It didn't take me to long to realize that using the scotchbrite wheels to take the angle to final dimensions was going to take me all night.  Sooo, I broke out the rotary burr bits.  Those worked a lot better than the scotchbrite wheels, but even as aggressive as those bits are, it took some time to shape the attach angle.

Also with all the shaping activities, I took my time to prevent excessive heating of the aluminum.  The rotary burr bits were able to remove more material and the angle did not heat up like it does on the scotchbrite wheels.  However, I was picking aluminum chips out of my hair and clothes the rest of the night.

After putzing with this for little over an hour, I was getting fairly close to having it shaped to the front of the rib.  At this point, I would take a little off with the scotchbrite wheel, fit it to the rib and see where I was hitting.  I repeated this cycle until I had the fit you see below.

Looks pretty good to me.

I am usually amazed at the thought Van's has put into some of their parts.  Below, you can see the T-410 reinforcement plate and the T-407 stiffener ring.  Taking all this apart, I felt like a kid building models again.  Twist the parts out, snip the tabs, and debur.  Discard the filler pieces.

Here you can see the T-410 reinforcement plate on the back side of the inboard rib.

Short night.  I am researching information on a air conditioner / heat pump for the garage.  It has already been in the 90's with suffocating humidity.  It makes for an uncomfortable building experience.  The airconditioner / heat pump is a lot of money and I would rather put that $$$ into the plane, but I am sure when it is 100 degree's outside, it would make building tolerable.  We'll see...