Steady work going on over the last couple of days on a myriad of smallish tasks in prep of getting this bird ready for post cure and then paint.

I got the right winglet leading edge added micro/West 410 fill sanded down and then epoxy wiped with 4 coats of West epoxy.  The right winglet LE isn’t as razor straight as the left side, but it’s pretty darn close and I’m not going to spend a ton more of time on it… to get it perfectly straight would require another round of fill and I just don’t think it’s worth it.  I want this plane flying, not passing straight edge inspections on leading edges down to thousands of an inch!

Now, that being said there is a level of straightness that I do want, and the leading edge of the right wing is currently not cutting the mustard.  So I sanded it down and slathered on West 410/micro to get it significantly straighter than it is now.  I’ll sand it down tomorrow and epoxy wipe it as I did the right winglet (and left wing too).

I initially sanded the epoxy wiped outboard left wing and outboard left winglet, knocking down the epoxy with 80 grit on the orbital sander.  I then spent a good bit of time working the lower front corner interface and surface level betwixt winglet and rudder.

I think with some minor sanding of some added West 410/micro fill (scraps from right wing LE) on the very front lower corner of the rudder it should have a nice transition from the winglet corner level.  Once I get the lower corner dialed in, I’ll then wet sand across the rudder-winglet interface seams —both inboard & outboard sides— to ensure those are nice and level with each other.

I did a bunch of other odd tasks as well, along with a good bit of assessing on the inboard hinge on the left aileron… that looks to need some tweaking and I’ll report on that as soon as I get a final assessment of what is required.

Regardless, my goal is to wrap up all the wing/aileron, winglet/rudder, and strake micro-finishing prep for primer and paint and move on to top cowl, turtledeck, longerons, and nose micro-finishing.

Pressing forward!

Today, before I changed into my shop clothes I headed downtown to Harbor Freight to pick up a couple of bottle jacks to use in some wooden wing lift/jack stands to allow lifting one wing or both wings up at the same time.  Sometimes on these birds you want to be able to work on the main gear, brakes, wheels, etc. without using a main gear leg as the jacking point.

I had to buy these bottle jacks today since they were on sale, making them cheaper than the significantly smaller (but still would have worked) 4 ton bottle jacks.

Again, my timeline in regards to working these stands now is simply because my buddy Guy Williams needs them to repair his heat warped gear leg on his Long-EZ.  And of course I wouldn’t be surprised if I need them at some in the near future as well (hopefully not for the same reason!).

I also rounded up the original pic that Steve Rothert posted of his stand, and this was the best (and cheapest) of all the ones I saw on the COBA forum… and there were plenty examples to be sure.

Back in the shop I removed and installed the left aileron a couple times as I dialed in the wing’s inboard aileron pocket hinge notch trailing edge.  After some minor finagling and sanding I got it where it allowed me to install the aileron in place, just without the unsightly wide, off-angle gap.

I live fairly near the high school and my friend’s daughter, my now not-so-little buddy, has been experiencing some bullying issues on her school bus.  The past couple weeks she’s been walking to my house and hanging out for 2-3 hours until her mom can pick her up after work.  Well, she helped me do the final wet sanding of wing and aileron at the seams between the two, to ensure the surfaces are level with each other.

After sanding down the West 410/micro added fill on the outboard end and leading edge of the left wing, I then whipped up some West epoxy with 205 fast hardener to do the first round of epoxy wipes on the sanded added wing filler (pic 1).

I installed the left rudder and assessed some issues that needed worked, the main area being the thick micro fill on the outboard winglet at the bottom front corner intersection with the rudder.  There was at least a good 0.1″ jut out of the winglet edge at this corner vs the rudder, so I removed the rudder and aggressively sanded this corner but also kept watchful eye on ensuring it flowed with the remaining winglet surface (pic 2).  There are some tricky contours in play on these outboard winglets.  My sanding left a patch of bare micro, which in itself isn’t an issue, it’s the hard edge between it and the surrounding epoxy wiped surface that I wanted to reestablish a smooth transition.  Thus I also epoxy wiped the area I sanded at the bottom rudder corner, along with the wing.

These pics are at the end of the evening, with 3 total coats of epoxy wipes.  Also note the gap between the winglet and rudder front edge was a little too wide just below the bottom hinge, so I added a flocro edge both on the winglet side and the rudder side.

Over on the right side I sanded down the leading edge of the right winglet to allow me to add West 410/micro to it.  Again, eyeballing it the winglet LE looked straight, but with a straight edge against it you could see some peaks and valleys, around 0.1″ in variance.  Tomorrow I’ll sand it straight and re-epoxy wipe the LE.  I also plan on doing the same process for the right wing LE, which is pretty much the same story.

I closed out the major task portion of the evening by wet sanding the left strake top and leading edge, as well as the RAM air inlet on the leading edge, with 150 grit.  Inside the air inlet was some rough spots so I whipped up some West 410 and applied it on the inner inlet tube [note red Kerosene heater #2 in lower left corner: specifically purchased for the upcoming post cure].

I also wet sanded all the smaller areas I epoxy wiped yesterday, like the right wing video camera threaded inserts, right wing TE spot, etc.

I had padded the mold for my top left winglet video camera mount for the layup, but I may have overdone it for the 1/8″ thick internal protective foam rubber padding I had planned on using… so as not to scratch up the paint on the winglet top.

Again, the weather has been quite chilly, so I fired up the Kerosene heater to run for about 10 minutes to get the shop nice and toasty before I locked up for the evening. While the heater was running I grabbed some 1/8″ thick cardboard and taped it to the top of the left winglet.  I then put the glassed video camera mounting base cap onto the winglet.  It fit ok, but not overly snug as I would prefer… so more finagling will be in the works for this guy.  I may punt and simply go with 1/4″ (vs 1/8″) foam padding.  We’ll see.

It was again a late evening, so with the shop given it’s last blast of hot air for the night, I locked ‘er up and headed inside.

Moving forward…

I started in on adding tape and even some cardboard to the top of the left winglet for what will be yet another video camera mount.  I added the cardboard since I will be using a rubber pad on the inside of the mount to ensure I don’t damage the paint on the winglet.  I’ll use that same rubber on the wing and right strake video camera mounts as well.

I then cut out 3 plies of BID (off the roll… haven’t done that in a while) and 2 plies of UNI (from leftover scraps) to use the same layup schedule I have on the other video camera mounts: BID-UNI-BID-UNI-BID.

I wetted out some peel ply first before laying up the 5 plies of glass, and then topped that off with some peel ply (pic 1).  Many hours later after the layup was about 90% cured, I pulled the top peel ply layer off (pic 2).

A little while later I pulled the entire layup off the left winglet top (pic 1) and then pulled the interior peel ply and simply cut the un-epoxied glass off around the edges (pic 2).

I then set the video camera mount back onto the left winglet to do its final cure overnight.

I had to run downtown for some Kerosene at a gas station that I found where I could simply pump it into a container.  I ended up going out for a quick bite with Jess, and while waiting for our food to arrive I got a call from my local canardian buddy Guy Williams.  He has heat damage to one of his Long-EZ gear legs and needs to jack up his bird to get the gear free hanging.

I had done some research on the COBA forum a week or two ago noting Steve Rothert’s roll-your-own jack stand design, before making a quick CAD model of what I remembered his design to be tonight.  I then sent these renderings to Guy to show him what we could do to help get his bird fixed and back in the air.

Back in the shop I did a A LOT of sanding on the front outboard corner of the left wing to knock down a couple of high spots, and deal with some low spot areas as well (partly my doing from my sanding down this area to knock the wingtip micro fill down a good bit).  The end result was that I had a slight low area that I decided to fill with West 410.  This is the area that I showed you had black guide coat sprayed on it in the past post.

Another problem area that I sprayed black guide coat on was over on the right wing, in a swath from the TE forward to just outboard of the wing bolt access hole.  As on the left wing above, I sanded this down for a good 20-30 minutes.  You’ll note some guide coat still showing in spots that are VERY shallow, but not high enough to get sanded off. At this point I’m going to leave some low spots that should get filled in with the first few rounds of epoxy primer that I will shoot, and then another round or two of high build 2K primer after that.  If need be, on TOP of the epoxy primer I’ll fill whatever divots or imperfections need filled.

I’ll note that just above and outboard of the wing bolt access hole I broke through back into original raw micro.  I hit this with a round of epoxy wipes as I was doing those below.

Yep, as I mixed up some West epoxy with fast hardener for the 410 fill I did on the left wing above, I used a bit of that raw epoxy to some epoxy wipes on the right wing video camera threaded inserts, a spot on the right wing outboard TE, a bit on the inboard corner of the right aileron, outboard right rudder, outboard left winglet, etc.

I then did another round of epoxy wipes about an hour later for another coat.

I wet sanded the entire top of the left wing and leading edge, as well as the left aileron top and both sides of the left rudder with 150 grit.  I then temp installed the left aileron.

I’ll note that cleaning up the hinges on the left aileron to put the other side hinge halves in place took WAY longer than I expected, and I spent nearly an hour getting those fine tuned and installed.

Now, pre-epoxy wipes I didn’t like the gap of the inboard left aileron hinge notch, so I filled it in with a small edge of flox, and then some micro/West 410 over that to finalize the fill on the very edge of the hinge notch, just underneath the screws in the pic below.

However, on the outboard/left side it’s a tad too thick/wide still and is not allowing the hinge to seat all the way forward.  This will be a simple fix of sanding it down a little.  Just wanted to show yet another task that I didn’t really report on earlier (I did the same thing on the bottom hinge of the left rudder).

I then ended the evening by wet sanding the right strake top and leading edge with 150 grit.  It turned out pretty nice if I do say so myself.

Tomorrow I will continue pressing forward with my primer & paint prepping tasks!

Yes, I’m guessing pretty much across the U.S. the cold weather rolled in with a vengeance just after Thanksgiving.  Thank God for Black Friday, since I was able to nab a myriad of tools and supplies for my main upcoming tasks: a post cure of all the major airplane components, and then painting.

One Black Friday sale I availed myself to was this torpedo heater from Tractor Supply.  I’ve had it for a couple of days now, and finally got around to filling ‘er with Kerosene and firing it up.  It definitely does its job… I can say that!  Moreover, this is a critical piece of equipment for my upcoming post cure.

I’ve also spent the last couple of days doing a deep dive on exactly what I need for the post cure, and then the paint following that.  Again, I’ve hit a number of Black Friday sales to pick up a couple extra paint guns and a slew of painting supplies while it was all on sale.

Today I got back to building on the bird for a good bit.  My main task was mounting the right rudder and aileron that I wet sanded with 150 grit sandpaper (last night).  I then spent a good bit of time sanding both the aileron and wing across the intersection seams, as well as the rudder with the winglet (on both sides).  I’m very pleased with both the gaps between aileron and wing, and rudder and winglet… as well as the surface level where they meet.

You may note the black paint I’ve sprayed as a guide coat in some problem areas, which again I did last night.  I’ll sand these down most likely tomorrow to have all the surfaces ready for primer.

I also finished prepping the right wing video camera mounting threaded insert hard points (yes, that I worked on last night!) for a few rounds of epoxy wipes to ensure they are nice and sealed for primer and paint.  Again, note the applied guide coat for another problem area that needs worked.

I then spent a good little bit wet sanding both sides of the left rudder with 150 grit sandpaper.  I focused on the left winglet (only) to have it close to very final shape to then use it as a mold for the top of left winglet video camera mount.

I didn’t get a shot of it, but I spent the remainder of my evening taping up the top of the left winglet and cutting glass in prep for the top of left winglet video camera mount that I plan on laying up first thing tomorrow (so I can monitor the kerosene torpedo heater).  And with that, I called it a night.

Still pressing forward!