Fettling

One of the fun things about joining a new community is learning the lingo. The world of 7 aficionados has quite a bit of interesting vocabulary. One of current favorites is the verb “to fettle”. For an example of usage, the build manual for my Westfield contains the following sentence.

Note this is a guide and it may be necessary to fettle out the hole to suit.

It’s actually an old word but, at least in the US, it has become rather obscure. Basically, it means trimming something to get it to fit properly.

I was doing a bit of fettling last night. Westfield has recently started adding this new tube to the frames they’re making.

I expect that it makes this part of the frame stronger. The problem is that they haven’t yet started cutting a notch for it in the panel which goes behind the seats.

You can see that I’ve started laying out the notch which is required using a bit of blue painter’s tape and a Sharpy. The lines don’t line up correctly because the panel slipped just as I snapped the picture.

I don’t have a lot of fancy sheet metal tools, but these straight cuts are simple enough using a sabre saw with a fine blade. However a sabre saw really isn’t very good for making tidy inside corners. So I found this interesting tool.

This is a hand nibbler. The part which pokes out of the top is a tiny jaw. When you work the handle, it takes tiny bites. It’s a simple, and relatively inexpensive tool, but it does a nice, quick job of cleaning up those inside corners after cutting most of the notch with the sabre saw.

Here you can see the panel in place and waiting to be riveted in.

Someday we’ll get to talk about the noun “blat”.