Hi Bob and Ian
Ian you mentioned "There is an aircraft company near me, they can laser cut anything.. makes plate cutting super easy... I just cannot afford to use them yet... but heck it is a fancy machine.. If you can think up a hundred things we all need in mlu I will go see what they charge... " as a way of cutting the floor plate as alternative to that or to acetylene torch cutting I used a small plasma cutter to cut all my floor plates and found it to be a very use-able tool.
See
http://www.canadianmilitarypattern.c...MetalWork.html about half way down the page. I even cut 10 inch section out of the drop side body that I fitted to my Pattern 12. In the pictures below you can see a bit of that process. You'll note in some of the pictures that there is a added fan and even a cover over the Plasma unit to extend its duty cycle by adding more cooling.