My airplane got the bird!                                                          

I left the garage door open and unattended for approximately four hours yesterday, and the result is shown in the picture.  Birds are the hardest-working little buggers I've ever seen.  I never saw the

,

birds who did this, and I hated to move the nest, but unless I was willing to suspend work for about a month I had no choice.  At least they hadn't managed to lay eggs yet.  Another pair of birds, this time Carolina Wrens, were aggressively trying to build a nest in the rafters while I worked in the garage not 10 feet from them.  I tried flushing them out by waving a broom around without success.  Finally, I enlisted the help of my pet owls, who were more than willing to stand guard at the door, looking quite fierce and intimidating as they swayed to and fro in the breeze.  So far, so good.  No more birds in the garage.

On a happier note, the fuel lines are finished.  The bad part of this is that while installing the fuel lines I discovered that I had routed the brake lines through the wrong grommets in one of the bulkheads, requiring that the long lines that go from the master cylinders on the rudder pedals back to the landing gear had to be redone.  I remember double-checking this as I did it in order to avoid just such a fowl up.  I managed to do it anyway.  This, of course,

means I get to either do the boiling-water trick one more time or try something I read today on the forums that was supposedly proposed by none other than Ken Krueger: run a #29 bit through the first 1/2 inch of brake line, which allows the inserts to be pushed in with no heat.  This sounds too easy, makes too much sense, seems too obvious, and therefore probably won't work.

While I'm waiting on the new brake lines to arrive, I started on the side skins, the first step of which involves removing a thin strip of metal in order to form the slot through which the wing spar will pass.  The manual says this can be accomplished with tin snips.  My initial attempt says this won't work (at least with my skill set).  I wasted an hour looking for my nibbler, which is the obvious tool, and gave up for the night.  Ordered a new nibbler from Spruce.  Very frustrating.

(5-27-13) Update!

Using a #29 bit to ream the ParFlex makes pressing the insert into the tube a snap.  It's still an interference fit, so it's plenty tight.  It's irritating thinking about all the headaches with the boiling-water routine that I could have avoided.