Yet another significant milestone knocked out today: the final major epoxy wiping of the last large surface on this bird.  I’ll note in this pic below that the shop lights are off in 2 of the 3 bays to keep the bugs from playing Kamikaze and sacrificing themselves for the “greater good” . . . in my epoxy!

Yep, today I quickly sanded all the micro touchups that I added yesterday, and then got to work laying down 4 coats of epoxy wipes.

One last shot of the epoxy wiped bottom outboard right wing, inside bottom winglet, and the winglet intersection fairing.  I pulled the wing outside to keep the dust down in the shop as I sand a bunch of the boat paint primer off the bottom of the wing (below).

Here is the classic BEFORE pic on the left, and the AFTER pic over an hour later on the right.  I need to load up some fresh sandpaper since by the time I got to the narrow end of the wing I felt as if I was merely polishing the wing vs removing the primer.  You can see I’m also really fine-tuning the surface contour of the bottom of wing as well with all this sanding.

Finally, the strip of paint removed from just forward of the aileron is due to a distinct elevation mismatch between the bottom aileron surface and the wing, with the wing lower than the aileron.  My remedy, at least the initial effort, is to remove as much material as I can to get these surface levels as close as possible.  If need be I’ll add a scooch of micro onto the aileron, but that will be my last option to avoid adding weight if possible.

When I epoxy wiped the bottom of the left aileron, I also epoxy wiped a good bit of the outboard left rudder on the side closest to the hinges.  I removed the left aileron to hopefully sand down the epoxy wipe tomorrow, and also removed the left rudder. I then wet sanded the epoxy wipes on the outboard left rudder.  I also did some final clean up sanding around the rudder cutout on the winglet.

In prep for finalizing the the no-kidding final fit and configuration of the aft nose/avionics cover in relationship with the forward nose and front canopy skirt seam I ordered some winged CAMLOC studs to use on the 4 securing hardpoints inside the nose (2x -12s and 1x -11).  The 4th CAMLOC stud is a -13, which nobody (Aircraft Spruce, Wicks, SkyBolt) has in stock.  Actually, they didn’t have any of these in stock and I bought the -11 and -12s off of eBay.  I’ll keep looking for the apparently ever-elusive winged -13 stud.

Have you ever wondered what that slot is in the top jaw of your CAMLOC pliers?  Yeah, I never really noticed it either.  But now I realize it sure comes in handy when installing a winged stud into its grommet (pic 1).  So here is my new 75% wing CAMLOC stud lineup for the forward positions inside the nose that secure the front edge of the aft nose/avionics cover (pic 2).

And here they are installed.  They work a treat since I don’t have to try to get a screwdriver up in there to pop them opened or closed… I can do it all by feel now (except for the #4 position… for now).

My installing and ops check of my new winged CAMLOC studs was part of my final fit and finish of the aft nose/avionics cover in its final integration with the forward nose surface and the front edge of the canopy skirt.  And yes, the very final fitting task will be when I finalize the canard surface in fine detail and integrate it with this cover as well.  Although I did do a bit of sanding, tonight was more of a recon and getting my task plan created.

I expect a few days of sanding, micro filling and epoxy wiping left to do to accomplish this integration, but when done the aft nose/avionics cover will be ready for primer and paint.  It’s also the last task I need to do before sanding down the canopy frame paint and repainting it as well.

Pushing towards paint!