More spinner cutout
I used the plexiglass disc in the die grinder and made the cutout in the spinner. I finished it up on the belt sander. The end of the belt sander worked perfectly for cleaning up the curve of the cutout. From there it was several iterations of enlarging the cutout with a half-round file and sand paper in order to give the prop 1/8″ clearance all the way around. I used the strap wrench to rotate the prop to high pitch to check that clearance. It ended up being a bit more than I wanted, but it’ll be fine.
I found that the spinner wouldn’t go far enough back, because of the front plate. I sanded the inside of the spinner a bit and got it fitting pretty well.
The instructions mention it’s important to make sure the spinner is concentric with the engine shaft. It says to identify a point at the tip of the spinner and make sure it’s stationary as the prop is turned. However, since the engine is preserved, I shouldn’t spin the prop. Instead I measured from the point at the tip to back edge at several locations. It’s pretty close, but one side is a tiny bit longer. I’ll do some sanding to correct that and straighten the back edge as well.