Over the past few days I’ve continued my unwavering love of sanding in numerous areas: on the nose and nose hatch, on the strake bottom leading edges (very minor fills left), and the wheel pants.

I’m happy to report I’m about done with all these components, and then it will be on to the bottom outboard of the wings and canard contour tweaks.  With these last two, that will complete the micro finishing of this bird.  Primer and paint after that.

On the front wheel pants I finished some minor fills on the top and sides (pic 1), with a good major fill on the bottom just forward of the wheel opening (pic 2).  After a good final sanding I then epoxy wiped the wheel pants with 2 coats of West epoxy.

On Friday and today (Sunday) I had my friend’s daughter (aka “my little buddy”) come over during her last days of spring break (her call!) to help clean the shop.  Not surprisingly, with all the micro sanding the last 6 months, just about every single thing in the shop has a layer of dust on it.

We started in the left-most bay and pulled out all the tools, equipment… everything.  She blew them off with the air hose, brushed them off with a foxtail and wiped them down as I cleaned the doors, walls, and even ceiling of micro dust.  Then a good sweep before all the clean stuff came back inside.

All in all, we spent about 8 hours total cleaning.

Part of that time was a good hour+ cleaning up the plasma cutting table since it will be getting a good workout in the near future cutting the forward heat shields, center section spar “outrigger” covers, and the firewall of course.

Later this evening I pulled the engine off the bird, and blocked the engine hoist with a 2×4 positive block to ensure the engine doesn’t end up on the shop floor in the wee hours of the morning.  I’ll note the engine will get its thorough cleaning as well in due time.

I then did a decent initial cleanup of the copious amounts of micro dust all over the firewall area and wing roots.

A layup task on my list was to add another Clickbond mounting point to the right rudder cable bracket.  The left side has an Adel clamp near the outboard end that keeps it in place, but this right side is flying solo with no help.  Thus, to keep the bracket from pivoting with only one attach point, I’m adding this bottom attach point to keep it solidly in place during rudder cable/brake deployment.

I’m pressing forward with theses arts ‘n crafts games that is micro finishing, and when that is over I expect my build output to increase significantly.  I will note the major detractor to said build output is my wedding upcoming in a month.  So 1 May is my no-kidding target swap between airplane build to getting the house in order and prepping for my wedding.  I will be doing single tasks, but I expect only those that take an hour or two per day to complete.