Chapter 21/22 – Some strake stuff

Admittedly after some long days I am just beat, and got a late start in the shop.  Where I was checking out last night’s layup when I bumped a portable stand kind of hard and sent my micro’d up Warning Annunciator/Emergency Sub-Panel flying.  I decided right then and there to spend a few minutes to sand down the micro and create a smooth surface for painting… and then for subsequent labeling and clear coating.

As you can see, the right side still has cured untouched micro, whereas the left side has been sanded.

Then over the next few hours I ran through the iterations of a couple light coats of primer followed by a couple coats of matte black paint.  The micro’d/sanded/painted tabs provide a smooth surface to affix labeling to… to then clear coat over for a nice labeled sub panel.

After my initial round of sanding and painting the sub-panel above, I then spent a good bit of time pulling all the peel ply, razor trimming and cleaning up all the right strake layups from last night.

As I did on the left side, I also used the “Fein” saw to trim down the back vertical edge of the GIB strake fuselage opening.  I then sanded it down and glassed it with 2 plies of BID. I then peel plied the layup.

I then did a repair layup on the left side OD rib.  I noticed this when I was horking on the left side leading edge that I cause a slight crack at the top side of the OD rib attach to the CS spar.  Since I had to reshape the nose, apparently I didn’t get it exactly right and with enough pressure on the front of the OD rib it caused a slight separate (about 1/16″ or 0.060″) at the top aft edge of the OD rib.

I removed the glass on the top half first, cleaned up and sanded the remaining surfaces before laying a couple plies of glass back in … with some more flox of course.

Here’s the reglassed outboard side of the OD rib as well.

Kind of crazy how long a few layups took start to finish, but with these in the bag I called it an earlier night.

 

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