With the white primer curing on both the canopy frame and the minor Metal Glaze spot fills on the fuselage, it gave me time to tackle some other tasks starting off this morning.

First off was a bit of glasswork.  A to-do item on my task list for some time was to mend some oops’s I made when I cut out the extra layer of wood & glass with the Fein saw on the inside of the aft nose/avionics cover.  I broke through in about 6 spots total, all slices averaging from about a 1/4″ to 1″ in length.  I also had one spot to repair where I cracked it just a bit too when I was scraping out the excess wood and glass on the inside.

Here are a couple shots of the accidental breakthrough cuts showing on the top of the aft nose/avionics cover.  I’ll note that these are only on the exterior of the cover since the inside has long been filled with pour foam and re-glassed.

I then dug around in my spare glass box and found a perfect long thin piece of UNI to use as repair patches.  I want some glass to bridge these cuts but the thinner the better for finishing purposes.

I then laid up the UNI patches and peel plied them.  Task complete!

I then got to work on my milling machine CNC capability for a bit.  I started off by finding the stepper motor cables (2 per) and hooking those up to get an idea of how I would run and secure them.

Next up was the control box.  I needed to make a decision on how it would get mounted to the wall, and I actually reversed my previous decision and flipped ends for what would be the top.

I then inventoried all my ports, cable passthroughs, switches, etc. that would need to get mounted to the control box.

I also assessed & planned out the layout of the components inside the control box as well.

Finally, after not being able to locate my wiring diagrams for the milling machine CNC control box, I decided to simply print them out.  I haven’t used my printer for 11×17 sheets in quite a while so the printouts look a little raspy… but usable.

A bit later the canopy frame white primer was ready for sanding, so I spent another good hour + final contouring it in prep for paint.

I then removed the protective duct tape and underlying painters tape around the edge of the canopy where it abuts the frame.  Once again I spent a good 45 minutes very carefully cleaning up the edge and removing minute bits of excess tape.

With no show-stopping blemishes on the surface of the canopy frame or around the edge, I then re-taped the edge of the canopy at the frame with painters tape in prep for paint.

After sanding down the small dollops of white primer on the fuselage and prepping it for paint, I mixed up some blue paint and started painting… using the roll and tip method on all surfaces.

Since I’m discussing the canopy I’ll show it in blue paint although I painted it second after the fuselage.

I didn’t mix up enough paint for all the parts, so after painting the fuselage I decided I had just enough to finish the canopy frame next… although it was just a tad thin/dry.  Although that still didn’t stop the runs in some spots. Crazy!

I have to say for the record that tipping the paint generates far better results than without. However, that doesn’t mean the results were perfect…

especially on the sides of the fuselage where I still had a few issues with runs even though I was diligent —or so I thought <sigh>— in keeping the paint thick enough to cover evenly, but not too thick to run after I tipped it.

Here we have new coats of rolled & tipped blue paint on the landing brake and the RAM air scoop/hell hole hatch cover… after I mixed up another batch of blue paint.

I then rolled and tipped the blue paint on the nose hatch door, nose gear fairing and nose gear doors.

I love the blue color of this paint and how it looks… from 10′ away.  I have to say I’m not thrilled with how this paint levels out while curing… or technically doesn’t level out.

Although the surface is exponentially better by adding the tipping method to the rolling, in some parts it’s not a huge improvement.  Some of that is my inexperience with rolling and tipping to be sure, but I think some tweaks will need to be made to my process to enhance how this paint goes on.  In addition, I still feel that a final sand, polish and buff-out ala traditional auto paint will be required to get nice smooth surface along with the gloss shine.

I then wet sanded the white primer on the underside of the wings with 500 grit sandpaper. I have to say that I learned yet another hard lesson in that I should have sanded the primer on the underside wing surfaces to its final texture before it cured to a much tougher surface.

By the time I got this tough sanding knocked out (although I do have a number of spots to do final re-sands), then taped off the surface edges for paint, it was just too late to start painting.  I plan on knocking out this paint job first thing out the gate tomorrow.

With that, I left the blue paint to cure and called it a night.

I started off today by filling the fuselage paint pockmarks and divots with Metal Glaze filler to fill these small blemishes in the paint.

I then reinstalled the painted nose gear door hinges using button head screws.

I wanted to get these nose gear door hinges installed before the final paint coats on the fuselage and nose to ensure I didn’t ding up, damage or scratch the paint.  I’ll note that the unpainted area on the aft inside of the wheel well will be completed once I install and dial in the orientation of the belly-mounted video camera.

Again, to utilize the minimal amount of daylight currently available I went ahead and spent about 1.5 hours sanding the gray primer on the canopy frame.

I’ll reiterate that for the remainder of this build I really need to dial in the surface prep to be spot on at the primer phase so the subsequent painting goes smoother than these first rounds have.

Thus, I aggressively sanded the gray primer coat to reveal a good bit of the underlying white primer coat.  Moreover, I now start with 220 grit and finish with 320 grit, to provide a smoother, even surface for the next round of primer/paint.

I then mixed up some white primer and applied it to the canopy frame (actually, just prior to this I used the last bit of available sunlight to re-sand some areas I missed on the RAM air scoop/hell hole hatch cover… which resulted in a few more breakthroughs in the paint down to the primer coat. Definitely a recoat will be required).

As with the gray primer coat, I used a small bit of the white primer laced with a good bit of micro to do yet even another round of fills on a few minor surface blemishes.

Although the white primer never seems to fully obscure the underlying coat, this coat went on well and I’m happy with it.

In addition to the canopy frame, I sanded down the underwing baggage pod threaded mounting inserts and then applied white primer to those areas.  I also sanded and applied white primer to the bottom trailing edge of the aileron pocket, on both wings.

I also applied white primer to the West 410 refills along the edge of the wing and strake junctions, as well as primer-thin areas on both the wings and the strakes.

Here we have areas of the left wing and strake where I’ve reapplied white primer.

I had planned on getting the next round of blue paint knocked out, but it was not meant to be this evening since I decided to also apply white primer to the sanded fuselage/nose Metal Glaze fills.  On a positive note, if all goes right tomorrow I’ll be able to add the canopy frame to the list of things to get painted blue.

Pressing forward… slow but steady!

Since the days are so short now I started off today by wet sanding the RAM air scoop/hell hole hatch cover outside while I still had daylight.  With it still wet in this pic below it looks like it doesn’t need any more paint and I should call it good.

But alas, I had a number of breakthroughs in the surface so I will be applying at least one more coat of blue paint

In fact, a bit later after it dried I realized I needed to do another round of final detail sanding on the RAM air scoop, which I’ll knock out tomorrow during daylight again.

I then spent well over 4 hours sanding the fuselage white primer “freckle” retouches that filled small depressions and surface speckles in the paint.

It doesn’t look pretty for certain, but the surface is now smooth as silk.  I still need to sand down the inside of the landing brake depression for one more coat of blue paint there, but for the most part the fuselage is ready to go, except . . .

There are still a just handful of small pockmarks (slightly larger than pinholes/only on the surface) and a couple of divots (look more like dings that you’d make with the edge of a coin) that need fill.  Since they are so small, and I don’t want to wait for a full cure on West 410, I will cheat and use Evercoat Metal Glaze to fill them.  I had planned on doing that prior to paint, but with the weather so cold I didn’t want to start painting in the evening to fight the really cold overnight.

Thus I’m kicking back the painting until tomorrow late morning/early afternoon.  I also had a couple of phone calls this evening and spent some time with those.  I guess one more day won’t break the bank, eh?

With the white primer that I applied to the “freckles” on the fuselage still curing, I started off today by wet sanding the landing brake, nose hatch door, nose gear fairing and nose gear doors.

The landing brake has some very minor varying surface levels that I refined much further to really dial in the surface smoothness, thus the breakthroughs back into the primer coat.

On the other components, although I didn’t have what I would consider 2 solid coats, I tried my hand at surface finishing those to see if I could proceed into the buffing and polishing stages… but alas, I either broke through in some minor spots back to primer, or I got some uneven paint coloration.  Bottom line is that all these components will need another 2 solid coats before they are ready for either final cure or buffing and polishing.

A note on the paint: between self-inflicted issues in my not being diligent enough on surface prep, to needing to do deeper research on the application process, I think I’m finally ironing out MY issues with the paint application.  After watching some Epifanes produced videos, I believe that my lack of tipping (very gently gliding a brush over the roller applied paint to even it out) is the root cause of my current problems.

You see, the paint lays down beautifully in about 90% of the areas when simply rolling it on, but then the 10% where there are slight imperfections can’t be worked with a roller.  Then later the final finish of these 10% areas become problematic and require a recoat.  My epifany is that I can see where tipping with a brush not only evens out the paint for final leveling and subsequent cure/finishing, but it provides a method for quality control.  Combine this refined paint application process with a renewed focus on surface prep and I think I should be on the right track regarding paint.

It’s all about learning and dialing it in when it comes to a new system like this.

I had told my little buddy that I’d hang out for a few hours today, knowing that my canopy frame white primer needed a good 24-hour cure time as well.  One area I need to start focusing on again as I get towards the end of this build is my true CNC machining/lathing capabilities so I can make some parts for this bird.  I figured during these paint and primer cure times I would start knocking out some tasks to get my milling machine, and in turn lathe, CNC’d and online.

I have all the milling machine stepper motors installed, except the shaft on the X-axis stepper motor is about 1/8″ too long, preventing the motor to be fully mounted onto the motor mount… as below in a pic I took a LONG time ago.

I rechecked the gap and it was right at 1/8″, or 0.125″.

Yes, I should have some fancy way to remove the extra material, but alas, I don’t… so I resorted to my neanderthal machining ways.  First by marking the 1/8″ excess with a Sharpie . . .

And then trimming the stepper motor shaft with my trusty Dremel Tool.  Not a perfect finish of course, but it will do!

I then remounted the quick connect stepper motor coupler.

And remounted the stepper motor… Voila, it fits.  Success!

After coming back from hanging out with my little buddy, I spent about an hour and a half sanding down the white primer coat on the canopy frame.

I then mixed up some gray primer and applied it a good bit thicker than I did the first white primer coat, although the white primer adhered just fine.

With just a tiny bit of primer left in the bottom of the cup, I then stirred in a good bit of micro and applied it to some minor gaps at the junction of the canopy and frame.  I also filled a few small divots as well with the thickened primer.

Tomorrow I plan on sanding down the RAM air scoop/hell hole hatch cover and the fuselage before doing another round of blue paint on all those components.  The bottom cowling will get sanded, but I won’t do any more blue paint coats on that until I dial in the paint scheme with the top cowling, when the plane is upright.

I didn’t get much done yesterday with it being Thanksgiving… although I did get a bit of sanding in.

Today I actually started off with about an hour and a half of sanding on the fuselage paint, before taking a break outside to sand the cured epoxy wipes on the canopy frame. Overall I spent about 3 hours sanding down the epoxy surface on the canopy frame.

Here is the result.

And the other side.

I then whipped up some white primer and thickened it a bit with micro.  I’m adding another coat of primer (3 minimum) into the mix to ensure a better finish before paint from here on out.

That being said, I was just a bit shy on the amount of primer that would have been optimum to finish the first coat, but I was able to squeeze out the minimum on this first round and get ‘er done.

I then got back to the fuselage where I spent another good hour wet sanding it, after which I then mixed even more white primer and applied it to the low spots for what I call “freckles”… which are speckled areas typically smaller in size than a quarter that are showing low bits as compared to the surface of the good paint.

I’d say just under half the white you see is from actually sanding through the top blue paint to the underlying surface, where the other mottled splotches of white are from primer filing the speckled areas.

After a good 4+ hours of cure, I went ahead and filled a good number of spots on the canopy frame with West 410.  These areas are really quite small so I’m not overly concerned with heat generated from what will be the blue painted topcoat.

Here’s another shot of the West 410 refills on the other side of the canopy frame.

Cheating just a bit and doing these refills now will allow me to sand them down and roll right into the next round of primer fairly early on tomorrow.

And with that, I called it a night to let all this stuff cure.  I’ll keep churning on the fuselage paint to enable me to get this bird flipped back upright ASAP.

Today I started out by sanding the micro + West 410 refills on various low spots and deep scratches on the canopy frame, which I set up outside.

I then set the canopy back up in the shop and proceeded to epoxy wipe the canopy frame.  A bit later I pulled the tape off the edge of the canopy where it met the frame.

I am pleased with the edge of the canopy frame where it meets the actual canopy, although I did spend about 45 minutes shaving down a few high spots on each side of the forward edges of the canopy in an effort to create a straight line at the canopy edge all the way around the canopy frame.

Here are a few more pics of the initial epoxy wipe and the exposed canopy edge.

I had planned on sanding the paint on the fuselage and associated components in the hours in between the epoxy wipes, but the canopy ended up needing a bit more attention than I had initial planned on.  In fact, before the second epoxy wipe I spent almost 2 hours carefully digging out the fine bits of tape along the edge of the canopy.

Here we have the canopy frame in its 4th and final epoxy wipe.

Although it was a bit of a pain, each round of epoxy wipe I would pull the protective tape after the epoxy set up after about an hour.  I would ensure there was not epoxy on the canopy, and any that was present I would clean off . . .

then before the next round of epoxy I would apply fresh tape around the edge of the canopy to protect it from the fresh epoxy wipe.

I came back after about an hour of cure time on this last wipe and pulled this tape.

Again, kind of an entailed, niggling process but I am very happy to have this critical step completed in the finishing process on the plane.  I’ll let this epoxy cure for a couple of days before taping up the canopy again and sanding down the epoxy coat in prep for primer.

I’ll report that both yesterday and today I have been working the blue paint on the bottom of the fuselage.  While looking closely at the paint surface I found about a dozen and a half depressions and blemishes in the paint (technically the underlying fuselage surface).  The first couple of pics below are of the fuselage sides.

As you can see, I identified all the blemishes with small pieces of green tape.

And here we have some divots/blemishes on the bottom of the fuselage.

I needed to make a decision.  Do I A) simply fill the depressions, divots and blemishes and press forward?  Or B) sand the entire paint coat down to really dial in the smoothness and quality of both the paint and fuselage surface?

I know I have repeatedly stated that “perfection is the enemy of good enough” and that I’m not shooting for a perfect paint job… just “good enough.”  However, the issue here is not just about looks, or even quality, but weight.  Albeit it may be negligible, but I felt I should do my due diligence by really dialing in the surface as it should be for both smoothness and minimal paint and fill.

Thus another sanding adventure ensued.  I used 400 grit and started wet sanding, and wet sanding, and wet sanding . . .

I will state that it’s a mind-boggling mystery to me how you work the micro finish over and over, then sand down the epoxy wiped surface, then multiple rounds of sanding on multiple coats of primer, only to then still have enough surface irregularities to have essentially a sacrificial first coat (actually two) of paint.  Regardless, I’ll note my lessons learned (finish with a higher grit sandpaper at nearly all phases and use guide coats to ensure no depressions in the surface), chock it up as part of the process and press forward to get it done.

After about another 5 hours of wet sanding of the blue paint on the bottom of the fuselage, I stopped sanding for the day to do some surface refills on the canopy frame micro.  Since I’m adding micro on micro I did cheat a bit by adding just a hair bit of West 410, even though the canopy frame will be blue (ie a bit hotter surface temps than white).  I added the West 410 because just a bit of it in the micro really creates a creamy filling to aid in getting it into the deeper, narrower voids.

Yep, just a scant bit of the West 410 really affects the consistency, but as you can see the amount I added didn’t change the color of the micro that much.

With the divots and deep scratches filled on the canopy frame’s micro finish, I then left it to cure overnight.

Tomorrow I plan on sanding the canopy frame refill and then epoxy wiping the canopy frame.  If all goes according to plan, the canopy frame should be in blue paint very soon. In addition, I’ll continue to work the bottom fuselage and other components in blue paint as well in my attempt to get this bird flipped back upright.

While the paint cures on the bottom of the fuselage and its associated components, I started off today by removing the weights from the floxed in threaded baggage pod hardpoints that I installed into the wing bottom surfaces.  It took about 45 minutes total to remove the bolts, gently and carefully pry off the wide diameter washers and then clean up around each installed hardpoint.

With “time on my hands” due to the curing paint, along with fairly nice weather, I decided to knock out some more finishing tasks.  I pulled the canopy out of its storage in the rec room of my house and then taped up the edge to secure the plastic protective covering in place, but moreover to protect the edge of the canopy as I sanded the frame in prep for micro finish.

After a thorough sanding of the frame, I cleaned the surface in prep for micro.  I also added a ply of electrical tape right at the edge of the initial tape… a hack I learned from Dave Berenholtz when he finished his canopy.

I then whipped up a bunch of micro and slathered it onto the canopy frame. Then, after I cleaned up all the tools and put everything away in the shop in prep for closing it up, I carefully pulled the black electrical tape off at a sharp angle to produce a very nice, clean edge on the border between the canopy and frame.

I’ll note that I’m only using a straight traditional micro fill on the canopy frame since I plan on painting it the same blue as I’ve been using on the bottom of the plane.  A restriction that West 410 filler has is to not be subjected to higher heat.  Although I clearly don’t see the medium blue I’m using getting excessively hot, it is clearly not white and thus will naturally have a higher surface temp.  So to be on the safe side I’ll simply avoid using West 410 filler on any of the top center components of the bird.

After the micro cured for a few hours, I then moved the canopy into the shop to let it cure overnight.

Tomorrow will be a lighter build day since I’ll be out for most of the afternoon and evening, but I will still try to knock out as much as I can on the build earlier in the day.

Adding ancillary components like wheel pants and baggage pods to our birds tend to be interesting endeavors and a bit of ironic humor in that the vendors selling these items tend to highlight install times way lower than the time it actually takes in reality to complete these installs.

And so it is I would say with the baggage pods.

My goal today was not to finish the baggage pod installs, but to optimize my efforts with the plane being inverted.  One such task that I assessed would be much easier with the bird upside down —again, due to simple gravity— is the installation of the underwing baggage pod threaded hardpoints.  These make up 4 of the 6 threaded hardpoints that secure the baggage pod to its respective wing.  Yep, in my crazy way of doing things I already embedded the top of wing threaded hardpoints in the wings before I glassed the top skins back in 2012.

Little would I have guessed that this one task would end up taking almost 8 hours total!

I started off by measuring out from the AC centerline (BL 0) to BL 61, which per Gary Hunter’s install instructions is the mark for Long-EZ baggage installs.  Again, BL 61 is what I used when I embedded my topside wing hardpoints prior to skinning the wings.

The above measurements, marked on a piece of painters tape on the wing surface, served as a crosscheck to ensure that my laser line shot was in the realm of reality.  I’ll also note that when I measured out to BL 61 with the tape measure, I ensured that it was as close to exact parallel with the aft edge of the engine mount to keep it perpendicular (90º) to AC centerline.

Clearly my crosscheck hash marks on the wing were all well and good, but I would need a projection target aft of each wing to ensure I was shooting my frontside laser from BL61 to a known BL61 point on the other end, aft.

To do this, I ran a line down the center of the aircraft to the center point of my long straight board (sitting on the ladder… and clamped in place).  I then measured out 61″ each side from this center line to get my BL61 mark.  I then simply hung a carpenter’s speed square down at the BL61 line to use as the edge to line up my laser.  To be clear, I ensured my long board was perpendicular to AC centerline as well.

I then set up my laser unit at 61″ (BL 61) from the center of the nose and shot my line back across the wing to just kiss the vertical edge of the carpenter’s square hanging down on the long board.

Here’s the laser shot on the left wing.  I placed the green roll of tape on the wing for this pic to make the laser line more visible.  I will note that I was within 0.5″ of centerline on the topside wing baggage pod hardpoints as well… perfectly fine for what I’m doing here.

After shooting the baggage pod centerlines at BL 61, I then got busy determining the install locations of the threaded aluminum mounting hardpoints, which I picked up from the Cozy Girrrls.

My main goal here is to get these underwing baggage pod mounting points floxed into the wings while the wings are inverted.  To be clear, although this is a step in the mounting of the baggage pods, that is not what I’m doing here.  I say this because if these inserts are off here, say even by a 1/4″, I can work with that when I actually get to installing the baggage pods.  My guess is that my tolerance here is +/- around 1/8″.  I can alway fudge a bit on the width of the baggage pod mounting strap if I really needed to by adding say a 1/4″ to the width on one side… and no one but you guys would ever know that I did that! (smile).

You can say that’s sloppy work… or that it’s being efficient in build priorities.  To each their own personal thoughts, but clearly I’m shooting for and calling it efficiency.

I then drilled the holes with the final bit size being 3/8″.  I had to do about 3 iterations on each hole to get the foam cleared out to the proper depth.

On the forward holes I was shooting to get the holes to just kiss the front face of the shear web inside the wing.  I achieved this on the right wing below, but was about 1/4″ forward on the left wing.  So I cleared out some foam in the holes on the aft side and will just use a bit more flox to secure the left wing forward hardpoints to the face of the shear web.

I then spend a good bit of time taping off the open end of the threaded aluminum mounting inserts, cleaning them with Acetone, and then taping up the large washers that then got bolted to the mounting inserts.

These pics aren’t great, but here are the inserts ready to be floxed into place.  I added clear packing tape around the holes, again as recommended by Gary Hunter in the installation instructions.

And then floxed the 4 inserts into each respective wing… here is the left wing baggage pod mounting hardpoints.

And a closer shot, before I placed weights on them to keep the insert faces as flush as possible with the wing surface.

This shot was a couple of hours later, and shows not only the weights on top of the floxed in place baggage pod underwing mounting hardpoints, but also the second coat of blue paint on the fuselage accent and landing brake.

Here’s another shot of the second coat of blue paint on the bottom fuselage.

I also recoated the bottom cowling….

The RAM air scoop/hell hole hatch cover . . .

The landing brake with another coat of blue.

The finished interior blue trim of the landing brake.

The nose hatch door and nose gear fairing and gear doors, all with another coat of blue.

And finally, let’s not forget the belly video camera housing mount and the swing down taxi light assembly with their next coats of blue paint.

And with all that… I left the flox and paint to cure and called it a night.

The Epifanes paint system allows me to apply another coat within a 24-48 hour period without having to sand the current paint coat.  Since I finished the last round of painting around midnight I didn’t want to do the next round of painting right at the 24 hour mark, since obviously that’s pretty darn late.  Thus, I chose to use the time allotted me per the Epifanes manual to push the next paint coat application during more reasonable hours.

As I “watched” my paint dry I got a couple key tasks knocked out.

First up was filling in some dings that I inflicted on the edges of the gap —primarily on the left strake/wing as seen here— between the strake and wing when I recut that junction.

But also on the right wing edge as well.

Next, I checked the charge on my Integrated Backup Battery System to find that it was 13.09 volts.  The window it should be in is between 13.5-14.5 volts.  So I connected it up to the battery charger to get it back into specs.

I also did a good bit of research and install info refresh on the baggage pod install to allow me to install the hard points —in the proper locations <wink>— while the bird is currently flipped inverted.

Tomorrow I plan on installing the baggage pod hardpoints and then complete the next round of blue painting on the fuselage and the collective parts.