Month: October 2011

Shoulder rest core

 

Here’s my shoulder rest, getting put together with 5-min epoxy. The next step is to glass the interior of it with 1 BID, and leave about an inch of dry glass hanging over the side. This gives you something to wet out when you move it to the plane.

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Canard and elevator cores

 

 

For my canard, I bought the cores from Featherlite. This turned out to be a fabulous idea!

The cores were delivered with all the extra foam left over, and also with the elevators. When I ordered them, I didn’t know the elevators would be cut too, so that was a very pleasant surprise. The cores are cut pretty much perfectly, and substantially better than I would’ve done myself. Also, since I bought the wings from Dennis Oelmann, I may get away with avoiding a hot wire saw altogether.

One thing I notice about the cores is that the part of the elevator that wraps around the torque tube is really fragile before you glass it. There really isn’t much foam there, so I’ve been very delicate with it. I’d planned on storing this for a while, but I think I may go ahead and get the canard started, just because I’m not sure the cores will survive a few months in my shop.

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Chapter 7 Finished!

This weekend I finally declared Chapter 7 completed. This was a long, messy one, and I’m glad it’s over. This chapter is the last one for a little while that requires really big layups (entire fuselage bottom, for example), which are a real challenge and a huge mess in my tiny shop. Can’t wait for chapter 8!

For this chapter I stuck entirely to the plans again.

The biggest change was that I sorta skipped building the rotisserie. My shop is small enough that there’s isn’t a whole lot of room at the ends of the plane, and I felt the rotisserie would take up too much space. So I flipped the place around on sawhorses when I needed to rotate it. If you do this, I found the biggest challenge was making sure the plane doesn’t warp if you rest it on its side. I found the best way to adjust if this sagging occurs is to move the saw horses until you find a good position. For me it was as close to the ends as possible. In hindsight, the rotisserie probably would’ve taken less time if I had the space.

I also deviated from the planes by using peel-ply on the entire exterior. My theory is that it gives the plane a better starting point for the finishing. I strongly recommend this. The exterior is already pretty darn smooth, and any bumps are such that I’ll be able to sand them off without damaging the glass. I doubt this would be true without the peel ply.

Several other builders have reported on difficulty creating the joggle for the landing gear cover. For this joggle, I created a simple jig. Once I was ready to glass, I cut a 1×5 wood block the exact length of the cut-out for the scoop in the landing gear bulkhead. I then covered it in wax paper. After doing the layup, I then stuffed this into the scoop cut-out. It was a snug fit, so it stayed there on its own during cure. This block squeezed the glass down into the joggle very effectively and created a very nice little lip.