Finish: Cowling. Bottom cowl completed.

Unlike for the top cowl, the bottom cowl required two sets of hands as gravity is, well, a downer.

Following several hours of filing the aft edges to get a good fit against the forward edge of the fuselage's skins (requiring exactly 19 on-and-off placements of the bottom cowl), the aft hinge rivet holes could be drilled.

Rather than follow plans and remove the top cowl, we chose to tape the bottom cowl in place with the top cowl also in place.  Coupled with the two cleco'd points near the spinner, we believed this helped stabilize and lock in the bottom cowl.

My friend had a great idea to ensure the side edges of the bottom cowl have a good tight fit against the top cowl:  With the cowl securely taped in place, he propped open the side of the bottom cowl and carefully sanded the edge down to get a great fit.  

The hinges are then match drilled.  It turns out that I drilled the side hinges in the upper cowl at a location slightly too high on those holes towards the forward edge of the cowl.  In fact, the edge distances were violated in several places.  So I will need to fill in those holes, replace the hinges and redrill the upper cowl side hinges.

Next we coated the bottom (and top) cowl pieces with epoxy, per plans, to make it impervious to oil.  This was aided by dissolving the epoxy in acetone and swirling, troweling and brushing the epoxy over the interior surface.  It's interesting to note that even though a very thin layer of epoxy was applied, both the upper and lower cowl pieces are noticeably heavier as a result.

The nutplate holes behind the spinner were drilled.  You'll note I have an extraneous cleco inbetween the two holes.  This is because when I originally lined up the cowl pieces, I had to drill another set of holes since I didn't like my original fitment.

Here are the cowl pieces mounted on the airframe.  The upper cowl side hinge isn't completed for reasons stated above.

Though this really belongs in Section 46A, I included it here as it's appropriate to do so.  This is the bottom cowl closeout (FF-00003A) being match drilled.

The bottom of the cowl is held down to the forward edge of the fuselage skin with screws.  This requires using a F-14133 Cowl Attach Plate as a template to find the holes that lead into the associated nutplates.

Finally, the bottom cowl heat shielding was placed by my friend.  The sheen of the thin epoxy layer is apparent.