I put this post under both chapters 10 & 25 because prepping the surface of the canard is a prerequisite for not only finishing the canard, but to glassing the canard “swoosh” tips to the canard & in optimizing the elevator install process.

How?  Well, in yet another discussion with Randi from the infamous Cozy Girrrls, she highly recommended finishing the bottom side of the canard BEFORE mounting the elevators to exponentially decrease the time & effort it takes to finish the bottom of the canard with all the elevator mounting tabs in place.  In addition, it helps knowing what the bottom contour of the canard will actually be when determining the spacing between the elevators & the aft edge of the canard.

As per Wayne Hicks, and so many other Canardians, I decided that the easiest, less-destructive route for prepping the surface of this plane for finishing would be sand blasting. It’s faster and clearly it can prep the fibers that lie slightly below the surface as compared to the “taller” fibers without having to destroy the strength & integrity of the outer fibers–as one would have to do if sanding the surface in preparation for finishing.

I personally find the texture, gleam & appearance of well laid-up glass (above) wonderful, as I’m sure a lot of other folks that work with fiberglass do as well.  But of course this surface can’t remain for the final finish, so we must often cover up some of our best work (and thankfully our not-so-best!) under micro!

I wanted to add this shot below for my fellow builders who don’t use MGS.  I still am impressed by how a line drawn on the shear web can still be seen after ~10 plies of 3″ UNI tape have been laid up over it.  As a user of MGS, it will be especially interesting to finish the surfaces of these “transparent skinned” components into a solid-colored airplane.

As I’m sure most of you are aware, I had some definite sandblasting woes when trying to sandblast the rollbar before priming it.  I have since done a lot of research and am hoping that I can get this sandblaster to work well enough to finish at least the canard, then I can reassess.

I started by taping up the antenna leads to protect them from any errant sandblasting.

I then did the same for the canard mounting tabs.

One issue that I wanted to avoid that was a possible contributor to my sandblasting woes was ensuring that the air I was using was CLEAN & DRY.  I bought & employed a couple of inline filters & combined them with the appropriate air connectors into an assembly that I jokingly called, “the Kraken.”  I then mounted the Kraken to the air inlet on the sandblaster.

I then employed all the tips, tricks & processes that I had learned about this somewhat cheap sandblaster, and although it’s still not a pleasure to use, it at least gets the job done now.  You can definitely tell the areas that were sandblasted & those that weren’t.

Just as Wayne Hicks described his sandblasting experience on his Cozy IV build site, the sandblasting textured the canard surface perfectly and didn’t damage it in any perceptable way.

Thus, stopping every few minutes for both the compressor to re-build up pressure, and clearing out the subsequent plugged-up nozzle from the decrease in pressure, I was able to knock out the bottom right side of the canard in about 40 minutes.  With a bigger, higher quality sandblaster I’m sure I could have cut that time in half, but I’m more than happy with the time, effort & cost required to attain the results that I did.

Another technique I employed in optimizing the sandblaster’s ability to simply work was to bring my compressor out to the job site.  Instead of running 2 lengths of air hose, I simply used one.  The first time around I used 2 hoses, with one of them being rubber. Apparently rubber hoses allow much more moisture buildup, as does longer lengths of hose.

So somewhere in both using the correct sequence in the opening of the 4 valves on the sandblaster, and the corrective measures I took to ensure clean, dry air, I was able to sandblast the entire bottom side of the canard.

At one point fairly early on, I did have to empty the sandblaster of all the media and fill the sandblaster hopper with smaller amounts to keep it from clogging up.  But again, that was a minor annoyance in comparison to being able to sandblast this thing on the cheap.

Since it started getting dark, on the topside of the canard I simply sandblasted the edges at the inboard areas where I will need to finish the canard, and the glass covering the outboard extensions which need surface prep for the upcoming glassing of the “swoosh” tip extensions.

All the sandblasting I accomplished today on the canard actually meets all my requirements for completing chapters 10 & 11.  However, I will finish sandblasting the top of the canard since as I mentioned before, my plan is to actually finish the entire canard & elevators to paint.

Since it wasn’t raining today, I started out today by picking up some particle board.  I decided to use only regular wood, so I also bought another 12 ft long 2×6.

I checked both 2×6’s with my aluminum long board straight edge to confirm that they were straight.  I have to say, they were both spot on.  I was actually prepared to break out the table saw to trim the edges to ensure they were even, but luckily didn’t have to.

I set up my adjustable saw horses in the side yard in preparation for cutting the particle board.

I then placed 2×3 stringers on top to allow clearance for the saw blade & to support the cut halves of cut particle board sheet.

I hauled the sheet of particle board from the truck to the sawhorses.

And measured & marked the cut line with a chalk line.

I then grabbed the caged “Beast” . . .

And unleashed it!

And cut the particle board sheet right down the middle.

I then started cutting the cross support struts for the work bench.

I pulled the canard down from its storage location on high.

One idea I had to get the fuselage tucked out of the way while I work on the canard is to simply build a tall-enough work bench to stow the fuselage underneath.

I put the fuselage on furniture dollies & strapped them with tie-downs to keep the fuselage in place.  This simple task made moving the fuselage amazingly EZ & was really helpful in getting the shop squared away.

Before taking off the roll bar assembly & headrest, I wanted to mock up the canopy to see what it looked like (as best possible with the canopy wrapped in plastic).  I mounted some wood cross support pieces for the canopy & locked them in place with clamps.

Here are a few pics of the headrest & roll bar under glass . . .

And a longer shot of the same.

I used a coupon yesterday for a 3/8″ air ratchet from Harbor Freight.  I wanted it specifically for using on the roll bar bolts, among a ton of other stuff.

When I hooked up the air ratchet up to the compressor, I discovered something about my air compressor that I think had a significant impact on my sand blasting session the other day.  The air coming out of the hose reel is not nearly as powerful as if I hook up a hose directly to one of the other 3 ports on the compressor manifold (I have a 4 ports available to hook up tools, one of them obviously being connected to the hose reel).  I’ll need to keep that in mind when I set up the sand blaster again.

After removing the roll bar assembly, I drilled out the seat belt attach bolts access holes.

I started with a small 1/16″ drill bit and worked my way up to a 1/2″ bit for the final hole sizes.

To reiterate, these holes will allow me access to the underside of the rollbar cross bar to get a socket onto the nut holding each seatbelt bolt in place.

I then started building the canard work bench . . .

I screwed the cross support pieces into place.

And then screwed the top pieces onto the work bench frame.  You can see below that the fuselage fits fine underneath the canard work bench.

I then set the canard on the bench to see how much room I have to work with.   It’s still amazing to me how long the canard is.  Even with a 12 ft long table, there’s just enough room to work on the canard.

I did take a break before actually building the canard table to clean up the bike & take it out for a short scoot.  Yep, this warm weather is awesome!

I started this morning by cleaning up the flox from installing the lock pin into the upper headrest for the lock mechanism. I also cut the retaining toothpick in the areas that it was showing.  The next time I whip up some flox I’ll put a couple drops on the interior side lock pin attach points to add a little strength.

I’ve been thinking that I will probably add some type of lightweight rubber/bungee positive attach clasp so that I can simply reach back before flight to ensure that the headrest top is held closed by feel.  Obviously I can’t do that with the lock, and although it works well, I don’t want the lock to be the only thing keeping the top of the headrest from flopping forward when I hit my airbrake at Mach 2.0!

You can see that I also installed the RAM mount.  In my last order from Aircraft Spruce, I picked up a medium and long arm for the ball mount.

I also picked up a universal tablet cradle that should handle any 7″ sized tablet.  Here I have my iPad Mini mounted.  At least initially, I think the long RAM arm should work well back here.  Unfortunately, the area immediately behind the roll bar frame is the only area where I can position the canopy cross bar, so the RAM arm decision will have to wait until after the canopy is installed.

Here’s a side view of the GIB RAM mount setup.

Here’s the view for the GIB:

And a shot of the headrest opened up.

Front view of the open headrest.

And a shot of all the Chapter 8 stuff I just spent the last 6 weeks working on!

You’ll note that the seatbelt bolts don’t sit down in the holes like they should since I have to still drill 2 quick holes in the bottom cross plate of the notch that sits just below the cross bar.  This will give me access to each seatbelt attach bolt so I can put a socket on the underside nut to bolt it into place.

And here’s just couple more shots from the GIB’s POV.

I will do a final light sanding of the roll bar to smooth out just a few rough spots that are left, and then reshoot those areas with primer/paint.

Ahh, which reminds me!  The final weight of the rollbar assembly with primer/paint is 5.95 lbs.  Add 0.17 lbs. for the attach hardware (including embedded nutplate assemblies) and the total weight for the rollbar is 6.12 lbs. Of course there’s a few ounces of added glass & flox, so I think calling it no more than 6.5 lbs total added weight installed wouldn’t be a stretch.

Yes, I’m calling Chapter 8 completed!  I may hold the record for the longest completion time for Chapter 8 in the history of canard building, but oh well!  There are a few more nitnoy cosmetic things that need be taken care of, but structurally & functionally the components for Chapter 8 are finished!

I started off today by pulling the few bits of remaining peel ply from yesterday’s BID tape layups on the lower seat back.  I then took the orbital sander to the seatback to help clean up the mess I had made during that gunky, sticky, tacky layup yesterday.  Some days it just seems like you’re nothing more than Pooh Bear with honey stuck all over you, and that was this layup for me yesterday!

I took some measurements for the final BID piece that would make up the final layup on the lower seat back install.  I had to go to the cutting table to lop off a piece large enough for this layup.

I pre-pregged mainly so that the line on the bottom edge would be fairly straight across, and would remain that way as I tugged and pulled on the layup around the curves on top. I figured it would also help in dealing with the oval hole in the center of the lower seat back.

The pre-preg did seem to help a great deal when I cut out the BID to make a smaller hole in the middle of the oval shaped hole.

Also, in the pic below I’m ready to remove the plastic, and after shoving the glass into the upper corners at the glass shelf and longerons, the plastic easily just peeled right away.

And here’s final layup of the lower seat back piece!

I did spend about another hour peel plying this layup, with my main concentration being on the edges of the oval hole.  To help keep the glass to stay in place on the edges of the hole, I poured some of the epoxy I had on hand into another cup and threw in some Cab-O-Sil.  It seemed to help, but the peel ply seemed to help a lot as well to keep the glass in place.

Here’s a view of the finished top cross bar notch.

I then set my sites on installing the cam lock into the headrest.  Once I determined how the lock was going to sit inside the headrest, I started whittling away the foam to create a channel for the lock arm to rotate into… and for the lock body to sit in as well.

I didn’t want to make the aft inner wall too thick (for clearance of the lock mechanism), so I laid up my first ply of BID so that it covered only the floor & aft wall of the channel.

Then I added a ply of BID that covered the floor of the channel and all 4 sides.

And to keep the flow of this step, I jumped ahead with the out-of-sequence pic below to show the finished lock channel layup.

I pretty much had to do the mirror image on the upper headrest piece, since the lock arm would swing up into the upper headrest to snag the lock pin.

Thus, again I made a decent mess by carving out some more foam.

I then marked the install location for the cam lock on the lower headrest piece.

And drilled the 5/8″ hole.

I then dug away more foam to create another channel between the very aft headrest wall, and the aft wall of the cavity that I had just created for the lock swing arm.

I used a scrap piece of 1/4″ Finnish Birch plywood & drilled a 5/8″ hole in that as well. The plywood will serve as a reinforcement plate for the lock, whilst all of it will be embedded in flox inside the new cavity I created on the aft headrest wall.

I dry fitted the plywood lock reinforcement plate.

And also dry fitted the lock.

Now, not shown in these pics is the thick black line on top of the lock to ensure it got placed upright in the mounting hole with the lock slot vertical when it was locked.  The cavity for the lock swing arm however was just a hair too angled on the outboard side, so the swing arm didn’t sit down all the way.  Well, somehow in working the install, I somehow lost site on my lock orientation line, and when all was said & done . . . oh, and FLOXED . . . I had installed my lock [again, IN FLOX!] into the headrest 90° from where I had intended to set it.  So my key doesn’t align with the position of the lock arm.

Oh, well.  Worse things have happened, and often minor screw-ups like this turn into fun war stories later on.  At least I still have vertical and horizontal key positions, versus some random funky angle!

I then turned back the upper headrest to mount the lock pin.  I cut off some uber heavy duty wire (I don’t remember what this stuff is for, but it may as well be a roll of steel rebar!)

The one bad thing about having a roll of really strong metal “wire,” is that when you cut it, it’s still curved!  I spent about 20 min trying to get the curve out, and finally gave up when it was real close to straight.

Although I very carefully measured & prognosticated where the lock arm would hit the lock pin, I was off just a hair and had to move it over about 0.065″.  To keep the lock pin in place in the now oval-ish hole, I used a drill bit.  Then, after multiple, multiple trials of locking the headrest, I knew that the lock pin was in the right position.  But before I could whip up some flox to secure it, I had to swap out the drill bit for a disposable and embed-able toothpick.

Here she is all floxed up.

And the whole headrest assembly showing some of my work for the day.

As the flox on the headrest lock pin was curing, I re-mounted the roll bar assembly, using all bolts & screws to ensure nothing had gone majorly wonky from glassing the lower seat back assembly.  I did have to do some sanding & shaving in the left corner of the cross bar shelf, but after a little bit of time the roll bar slide into place.

Here’s a long shot view of the glassed lower seat back & the cross bar assembly.

And I top level view to show the alignment of the lower seat back with the cross bar (the pic is offset just a little).

And the final shot of the evening shows the gap between the cross bar and the seat back shelf

I started today by pulling the peel ply from the flox & fuselage pieces that cover the right side nutplate insert assemblies.

And then the left side.

After sanding down both sets of flox covers for the nutplate assemblies, I then laid up the pre-pregged 2-ply UNI strips on the right side fuselage.   Of course I peel plied it afterwards.

And then did the same on the left side fuselage.  The first UNI ply was 12″ long, and the top was 14″ long.

While the fuselage sides were curing, I started work on the seat back in preparation for glassing in the lower seat back piece.  The first task was to trim the piece hanging down to 1.3″ wide.  I marked the cut line with a Sharpie & trimmed it with the Fein tool.

I prepped the BID tapes for installing the lower seat back by sorting through my BID scrap bin & then cutting out the required pieces.  I then cut the correct size plastic pieces and set up pre-preg assemblies for the BID tapes.

Here’s the lower seat back curing after the first round of layups.

While the initial round of BID tapes cured on the lower seat back, I pulled the peel ply on the right side nutplate assemblies’ UNI layup & cleaned it up.

And then did the same thing on the left side.

Here’s the lower seat back after the peel ply was pulled.  The duct tape in the middle is a reminder to trim a strand of BID that is sticking out from under the peel ply… which certainly will cure to be a spike lying in wait for my finger!!

I then mocked up the roll bar to check the fit of the width of the cross bar in the notch created by installing the lower seat back.

You’ll see in a minute why I called this blog entry what I called it.  Basically, once the nutplates get floxed into the side of the fuselage, they look like eyes.  Yes, I’m one artistic SOB!  Ha!

I started off today by installing the left side nutplate assemblies with the rivets reversed so that I could get them as close to the fuselage side as possible.

I then traced around each nutplate assembly to get as close to a perfect outline as possible for the cut into the fuselage side glass.

I then cut the glass along the marked outlines using a Fein tool.

And then I dug out the glass and cleaned up the glass on the ‘back wall’ of the nutplate cavity [which of course is the 2 plies of glass on the inside fuselage wall].

I mocked up the 1/16″ 2024 aluminum reinforcement plate with the nutplate so that the rivet holes aligned, then I drilled the rivet holes and installed the rivets.

Up until this point I had been using longer bolts to be able manipulate the nutplate assemblies & remove them more easily when I needed to.  But when the rivets were set, I removed the longer bolts and installed the actual AN4 bolts that would be used for the installation of the roll bar assembly.

Here’s a shot from inside the fuselage of the actual AN4 1/4″ bolts installed.

With the left side nutplate assemblies ready to be installed & floxed into place, I started on the right side of the fuselage to get those nutplates ready for installation.

I put the fuselage in a left bank to help me install the right side nutplate assemblies.

Just like the left side, I marked the outlines of the right side nutplate assemblies.

I then cut away the glass, dug out the foam and cleaned up the back wall of the nutplate cavities.

With the installation of the correct 1/4″ AN4 bolts on the right side, along with the left side secured in place, it was time to flox in place the right side nutplate assemblies.

To install the nutplate assemblies, I started with a flox slurry.  It wasn’t too runny, but it definitely wasn’t paste.  I did have flox paste on hand as well to finish off the holes.  When I got to the end of installing the right side nutplate assemblies however, I had pretty much filled each hole with flox–since the holes weren’t that big to begin with.

An issue I was having, although I had used fast hardener and leaned the fuselage at an angle, was that the flox was slowly oozing out of each hole.  For about 10 minutes I kept scooping up the oozing flox & squeegeeing it back into its respective hole.

As I was thinking about something to keep the flox in place, I realized that I could simply use the outer skin of the fuselage that I had just cut out.  It was exactly the same shape as the hole it came out of, and moreover, it had the exact right curve of the fuselage so that there would be no flat or odd spots on the edge of the fuselage when I re-glassed it later on.  I cleaned up the underside of the first piece of ‘diamond’ skin that I had removed, and when I pressed it into place, I knew I was on to something.

With the flox mess around the hole & all over the reattached skin piece, I knew that I would employ the help of one my old friends: PEEL PLY!   I ended up putting both outer skin cutouts back into place and securing them with peel ply.  Also, the peel ply helped soak up all the flox and epoxy mess that was around each hole.

While the flox was curing on the right side nutplate assemblies, I pulled out some scrap UNI to cut out for the 2-ply UNI reinforcement layup that I will be doing on each longeron over the freshly installed nutplate assemblies.  Since the outer edge of the nutplate assemblies are 10″ apart, I’ll be setting the first ply at 12″ (1″ past the edge of the hole) and the second ply at 14″ long, so that it goes 1″ past the first 12″ ply.

Here are the 2 plies of UNI glass for each side of the exterior longerons.  I’ll need to cut one more piece of plastic to set up these pre-pregs correctly.

Here’s the cured right side nutplate insert assemblies.  They set great and you can barely feel any difference between the reinserted exterior skin pieces and the old skin.  This will work much better than I thought, and reduces the steps on this task from 3 to 2.

I then leaned the fuselage in a hard right bank to work on the left side nutplates.

Here’s a long shot with the nutplate cavities ready to get their fill of flox.

And just like the right side nutplate assembly installation, I re-installed the removed skin pieces.  If you look closely at the pic below, it looks like a pair of eyes, thus, the eyes have it . . .