Chapter 25 – Sand, sander, sandest

I started off today by sanding down the micro/West 410 added fills to various areas on the left side, the first being the left wingtip, which was a bit “droopy” on the outboard edge.

I also added some micro/West 410 to the left wing’s BL 55.5 dip, where there is an elevation change on the wing.  Some builders sand this to natural contour, while others tend to hide it and have it filled more.  Since I’m very sneaky (ha!) I decided to hide it a bit more and make the top of the wing look a little more even here (pic 1).  Not to waste any leftover micro/West 410, I also filled in a few distinct low spots and any major divots I could find on the wing/winglet surfaces (pic 2).

Again, today with the added fill cured, I sanded all those down a good bit.

I’ll note that when I specify micro and “West 410,” the emphasis for these added fills is on the West 410.  What I’m doing here is essentially cheating by upping the ratio of West 410, which makes the added fill easier to sand without digging into or deforming the previous micro fill.

That being said, I also had enough left over to fill low spots and divots on the left strake as well, which I then sanded smooth today.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, a goal of mine today was to work all the wing and strake leading edges to get the bottom edge of each smooth/erased, and also the actual shape of the leading edges dialed in to final for the upcoming epoxy wipes.  Well, I’m happy to report that I accomplished this goal… sorry, no pics because it wouldn’t really show any real difference than before.

However, a distinct BEFORE and AFTER difference is the pre-shaping of the left strake leading edge oil heat/fresh air RAM intake scoop (pic 1), and the AFTER shot of that, now ready for epoxy wipes (pic 2).

Jess had the night off so it was date night, and I wanted to get out of the shop mid-evening.  I was working to get the right strake micro completely sanded when I got a call from my local Long-EZ buddy, Guy Williams.  He found a potential problem with his right gear and wanted my help in troubleshooting it.

So after a bit on the phone with Guy, I got back to the right strake sanding.  But alas, I didn’t have enough time to finish it so I’ll have to pick up on it tomorrow.  I’d say currently we’re at about 90% complete on the right strake (that’s not including cowl shoulder or longeron micro), so getting close to epoxy wiping!

In working on the right strake, as I did on the left side, I cleaned up the intersection of the strake where it meets the fuselage side.  Moreover, part of that was also working the right strake root fresh air intake port.  I’ll probably do just a bit more fine-tuning in this area, but it too is very close to final.

Finally, part of my strake sanding shenanigans this evening involved recutting and cleaning up the junction gap between right strake and wing.  I need to add a bit more flocro to both the wing edge and the strake edge where some chunks have broken off, but beyond that, this junction is pretty much final.

Tomorrow I’ll continue to press forward… And hopefully get to some epoxy wiping!

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