Today I was still embroiled in a lot of planning and assessing my path forward on various components on this bird that need some fairly expedited attention.

That being said, I also needed to get on with getting the micro finish (when I say that, I almost always mean about 4-5 part micro balloons plus a single part West 410 filler.  As our RV brethren have discovered, this makes sanding the micro finish infinitely easier with no noticeable loss in surface hardness) on this bird, so I slathered up the inside surfaces of the removed rudders with micro (pic 1) and then between 4-5 hours later I gave them a good working over with the cheese grater (pic 2).

During the cure time of the micro above I did some trial fits and ops test of my newly designed C4 canopy rod connector.  I trimmed down the inboard portion by 1/16″, but then ended up adding 0.02″ thickness back to it for the final version.  I plan on machining this fairly soon out of aluminum stock.

A bit later I prepped the outboard surfaces of the rudders for micro, including taping up the hinges and hidden bellhorn arms.

I also fired up my heat lamp and set a bondo knife on the 4 sides of the protective wire cage, one against each wire.  This is my method for always having a piping hot applicator that really helps “melt” the micro and make it WAY easier to apply to the glass surface.  I’ll use one for a minute or two max, then wipe it off, set it back on the heatlamp before grabbing the next one and using it for just a bit before the heat dissipates, then on to the next one.  Again, the heat is super, super critical in my opinion for getting a good flow of the micro onto the part.

I then slathered up the outboard sides of the rudders with micro.

Again, I took the cheese grater to the outboard micro on the rudders a few hours later.  At this stage it makes the micro look like either shredded coconut or mozzarella cheese.

And here’s the result.  I realize it’s a bit hard to tell with the distance of the camera and the white surface, but the high ridges are all knocked down and these will be ready for final sanding in the next day or two (at most).

Tomorrow I plan on continuing on with my micro-finishing of various parts, with the outboard winglets and ailerons on the short list of candidates.

Pressing forward!