Chapter 24 – Quick fairing layup?!

NO!!

Now it wasn’t overly difficult nor was there any issues, but good heavens did it kill about an entire day!

But I digress… let me back up to the beginning.

I started by cleaning up and sanding the area on the left wing-to-winglet intersection fairing —bottom side of course.

To keep the whole fairing light as possible my substrate material is balsa wood. Thus, to get a good glass-to-balsa wood bond along the trailing edge, I taped in from the TE about 0.5″ to keep the foam off of it.

I then built a taped cardboard dam for my pour foam (pic 1). Granted, the footprint was significantly larger than I needed, and I put in a LOT of pour foam (pic 2), but at least I never had to ADD any more pour foam: one shot, one kill!

After I let it cure for about 30 minutes, I then spent the next 45 minutes using a hack saw blade and a piece of cardboard tube (from a used up fiberglass roll) I cut and sanded it down to shape.

A bit more fine tuning and it was ready to glass!

And one more shot of the finished foam shaping on the left winglet intersection fairing from the front side.

I then whipped up some wet micro using Pro-Set epoxy and applied it to the entire foam area. On some spots I needed some thicker micro so I applied that as well.

Before applying the micro I made a plastic sheet pattern about an inch out from the edge of the foam, to allow me to cut the glass. The first ply I cut from a large scrap piece of UNI was about a 1/4″ less around the perimeter (except the trailing edge).

I put the UNI ply in place (pic 1) and then thoroughly wetted it out (pic 2).

The second ply I cut was BID off the roll biased at 45° angle. I cut this piece about 1/4″ more than the plastic sheet pattern to give me a 1/2″ overlap over the UNI (I like to cover UNI with BID).

I then did the same and put the BID ply in place (pic 1) and then wetted it out as well (pic 2).