Chapter 23/24/25 – Punch list work

This blog post covers that last few days.  I’ll start off by noting that yesterday I was unexpectedly asked by my friend Shelly to take her to an appointment down in Wilmington to remove stitches from her recent foot operation.  Needless to say, that pretty much wiped out my shop time for any tasks other than some general cleanup and hanging some dust-retaining plastic for my upcoming micro-finishing ops.

Rewinding a few days: I wanted to get some layups knocked out as I’ve got a few iterative rounds of final fitting of the top cowl front edge to the turtledeck coming up.  My original plan for the right side where the top cowl oil cans between 2 CAMLOCs, leaving the interfacing turtledeck surface low, was to build up the turtledeck somehow…. but then I decided to underfill the top cowling front edge from inside to fill in the air gap and simply sand down the outer surface of the top cowling level with the turtledeck.  Again, this will almost certainly be an iterative process, but in the end I think it will work much better than adding more material to the turtledeck.

I started with 3 stepped plies of carbon fiber on the inside right front edge of the top cowling.  I realized when I started to pull the peel ply that I had failed to grab some pics, so here is peel ply coming off (pic 1) and after cure with the peel ply off and CAMLOC holes clear again (pic 2).

I started the process to a much lesser degree on the left side as well, with a long single ply of CF to help fill in a slight gap, then another semi-circular ply on the inboard side (right in pics below).  Again, carbon fiber layup with peel ply (pic 1) and after cure with the peel ply removed, razor trimmed and CAMLOC holes clear (pic 2).

I had a little bit of epoxy left over in my cup, which as you probably know by now I hate to waste, so I did a quick 2-ply carbon fiber layup for the bottom lip of a GIB seatback hole cover that I will construct over time.  Here it is with peel ply on the underside and topside of the layup.

And then after cure with the peel ply removed, but not yet trimmed to shape.

Again, I started hanging plastic in prep for all the dust I’m going to create when micro-finishing the top of the bird in prep for painting.  I started by specifically hanging the plastic in the areas around the nose of the plane that would be hard to do with the canard in place.

Oh, by the way, note that I pulled the canard out of the house and installed it on the bird.

Also clearly visible is the aft nose/avionics cover and recently sanded nose hatch door in place.

Nothing is ever accomplished without sacrifice, and for me I spent well over half an hour looking for the baggie with all the aft nose/avionics cover hardware.  Even then, about half the CAMLOCs were missing so I spent nearly an hour in trial and error fitting of CAMLOCs to “finalize” fit (not all, since paint may require a few CAMLOC size changes).  To avoid playing the ever-so-fun “find me if you can” game, I created an Aft Nose/Avionics Cover Hardware Card like I have for both cowlings, RAM air scoop and wheel pants.

Besides finalizing my task list for such things as the aft nose/avionics cover, nose hatch cover, canard, elevators, etc., my installing of all these on the bird is a final pre-micro finish hurrah for one of the final major project update videos I’m about to record.  This is the first time during this build that this airplane will have all the major components (minus panel) installed together in essentially a “flight ready” status… and I want to capture it in the video.  Yes, I admit it’s for bragging rights, motivational fun and build status documentation all in one.

Speaking of documentation, I had compiled a video while I was constructing the exhaust pipe brackets and was waiting for James to do the final welding on the brackets before I posted the video.  However, James is neck deep in moving his business operations to a brand new just-built shop, and I know he’s super busy.  I wanted to get the exhaust pipe bracket video out before I post the major project update video so the sequencing wouldn’t be weird or out of order, so I finalized the exhaust pipe bracket video and uploaded it.  Here it is.

And with that, I’m going to get back to my shop cleanup and final task prep for my major project update video.  Once I’m done with the video, I’m pulling and bagging the engine and then rolling into micro-finishing the fuselage, strakes, wings and winglets.

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