I’ve been working on the aluminum that goes under the door openings and sits on top of the cockpit floor (below).
When I first tried to fit the piece, there was a substantial gap between the piece and the cockpit floor: about 1/2”.
It turns out that the cockpit floor pan was not flat to the chassis at the perimeter because of welding material:
I didn’t want to shave the welding material as I thought it would weaken the weld so I trimmed the cockpit floor panel in several places, e.g.:
It wasn’t a lot of material to remove but it then allowed the panel to lie flat and the under-door piece to sit on the cockpit floor aluminum without a gap.
I also decide to make a paint box to help with painting vapors and overspray while I’m painting small pieces in the shop because of adverse painting conditions outside. I found several examples on youtube and made one that would do the job without being too expensive.
The materials consisted of three poster board display panels, a filter for a HVAC system, a box fan, a 1/2” wood rod for hanging pieces and a roll of Gorilla tape. It took me about an hour to make the box and the total cost was $60.00 including the fan (the fan sits behind the box and filter and sucks air out of the box). For scale, the filter is 20” x 20”.
It works relatively well. I place the box on a portable bench at the open door to the shop and the overspray is captured by the box interior and filter (which I’ll probably need to change as it gets clogged) and the smaller aerosols not captured by the filter get blown out the open shop door by the fan.