Hiccups and Hurdles: Thrust Lines

Scott stepped up this morning to work on the plane. Our goal today was to get some support stringers installed to create the "box section" part of the fuselage, but prior to this I decided the firewall (area behind the engine) needed to be put in place first. We've come across a slight example of varying degrees of accuracy in the fuselage halves. Two main parts, a bulkhead aft of the cockpit, and fore of the rubber band pillar are a tad crooked, in opposite directions. This made "sighting" the firewall square to the rest of the fuselage a bit difficult, as we had no real "square" datum as a reference. Eyeball engineering took over.
Scott came up with the smart plan to cut out a section of the fuselage to square up the first piece of the firewall. Some delicate cutting on his part, and a steady hand helped. I just stayed out of the way, as my initial attempts to help led me to clumsily damaging a piece of the wing... luckily it can be easily repaired. I think I'll do a quick mini-lesson in the future on "thrust lines" -- the fact that a few bulkheads in the fuselage are not square shouldn't be too much of an issue -- making sure the propeller, when installed, is pointing "straight" out of the front of the plane IS a key issue. We'll end up having a "Nascar" airplane; one that turns left or right only!
Coming across these hiccups is part of the learning process. Perfection isn't the goal, but accepting hurdles as a fact of life, and taking the time to fix them is important. Assembly lines in real life are designed around perfect accuracy every time. That being said, even the new Airbus A380 was built from scratch the first time!