Since I couldn’t get the nose hatch door to latch into place last night before microing up the majority of the nose, my goal today was to definitely finish the micro application job on the nose.

Thus, I pulled the tape that secured the very aft edge of the nose hatch door as close to fully closed as possible, and then spent another half an hour carefully cutting and sanding the micro away from the edge of the nose hatch door to allow it to open freely.

Once the nose hatch door opened freely I removed quite a bit of tape from the foam seal to see if I could then get the door to lock close.  It didn’t (So yes, I probably could have waited to free the door, which may have allowed me not to go “weighted”… ahem!).  To keep the door closed while I micro’d the previously taped swath on each side, I then added a couple of heavy weights onto the door to keep it pressed as firmly closed as possible.

I then whipped up some micro and slathered it into the unmicro’d swaths from the door securing tape from last night.

At this point I can officially declare that the nose is in fact micro’d up!  Now all that’s needed is a bunch more sanding. Yay!

While the newly added micro on the nose cured, I went ahead and knocked out a sideline task of epoxy wiping the inside surface of the bottom cowling.  I had wholly expected to apply 2-3 coats, but after applying the first epoxy wipe I called it good.

You see, the reason why I’m epoxy wiping the inside of the cowling is twofold:
1st, I want to be able to more easily clean up any oil or liquids that come in contact with the cowling, without them soaking into the weave of the carbon fiber.
2nd, I want a smoother surface to apply my heat shields to under the exhaust pipes.  And since I had to rebuild the back half of the cowling (where the exhaust pipes are located) AND I peel plied my layups, one epoxy wipe seemed to do the trick just fine.

I also expected to get to wet sanding the elevators with 150 grit sand paper, but after doing the initial dry sanding with 120 grit on both elevators (almost 1.5 hours) I had had enough of sanding so I’ll do the wet sanding tomorrow.  Moreover, I need to fill a couple slight divots on the left elevator, so I did that and left it to cure overnight.

Back on the nose, I sanded the intersection at the aft nose/avionics cover new front lip and the aft area of the micro’d nose.  I also used my razor knife to carefully cut along the front of the aft nose cover front lip to free it from the nose micro.

I then pulled all the tape off the front lip of the aft nose cover.  Here it is open, with a shot from the aft side of the new micro lip on the nose.

And here’s a shot of the same from the front side.  I’ll note that there is just enough clearance for the front nose hatch door to be opened while the aft nose cover is fully opened.

With the tape off the front lip of the aft nose cover, I then snapped it back down into the closed position and grabbed a shot of the intersection between it and the new nose micro.

And of course we need a shot of the newly micro’d nose, which obviously needs to be sanded to a “pleasing’ shape at this point.

And one final shot of the freshly micro’d nose with the nose hatch door open.  Note the green tape which I used as my template, and is currently attached to the nose hatch door perimeter foam gap seal.

As I mentioned before, with the significantly less amount of tape remaining on the door seal (after I removed the duct tape and blue painters tape) it is still NOT latching closed.  The 1/8″ thick seal all around the entire perimeter is not allowing the door to close and latch… so I’m pulling the trigger on the same seal, only 1/16″ thick.  I’m thinking the front edge, front corners and aft middle segments will be 1/16″ thick, while the sides and aft corners will be the 1/8″ seal.  We’ll see and assess further in few days.

It was getting late, so I called it a night.  I’ll continue on with my micro finishing shenanigans tomorrow.