Admittedly it’s getting kind of hard for me to stay on track of my fill and sand iterations on the bottom/forward fuselage and nose “micro” fill.

Today I spent a few hours sanding the last big fill (#2) and dialed in the surface, shape and contour a lot closer to final.  I’m very happy with the shape, but again I have been failing in regards to the objective of the “fill once, sand once” method.  But as I’ve noted previously, the good news is that by using West 410 it forgives the sin of refilling and allows the “micro” finish to be nicely faired in and blended with the previous fill.

These pics are of the sanded and contoured bottom/forward fuselage and nose, with the next round of straight West 410 “micro” fill.  This last fill was much smaller, about 3 pumps of the West epoxy/hardener and only one batch.  Some of the patches you see aren’t even “required” but since I had a decent bit left over, I filled in some of the smaller holes and scratches.

I did have some decent-sized divots in the bottom center area of the fuselage between the nose gear doors and landing brake.  Clearly part of filing in some depression and divots in this area came with a skim coat to help ensure all the surfaces were covered adequately.

In addition to the forward area, I am very pleased with how my surface fill came out on the area forward of the left gear leg on this fuselage bottom “corner.”  This area was a bit low and depressed compared to the curve and flow of the bottom fuselage “corner” leading up to it.  As you can see, the dark splotch is fresh West 410 to fill in one small divot, which helps eliminate any extra epoxy required to fill it during the upcoming epoxy wipes.

With all these sanding sessions I haven’t been engaging in as long of build days that I would normally do. I’ll admit that multiple hours of sanding a day are enough for me and have been getting me good and tired.  So I’ve been trying to knock out some personal stuff on the side, especially to keep my shoulder from tiring out and aching…. slow and consistent is the mantra on this finishing!