Chapter 25 – Sticks of pain

And rights of passage

Any canard builder can tell you that yet another of many, I guess the grand finale, right of passage in building these birds is the micro-finishing process.

I started off this multi-day process with hitting the left wing and strake tops again with the air file.

This knocked down the micro a good bit more, but still a long way to go on the left side.

Here’s a selfie towards the end of the evening to capture just how amazingly messy this whole micro-finishing affair is all the way around.

I cut to length and ripped on the table saw a pre-primed board to create a stick of pain that is nearly 67″ long, which allows me to attach 4 each ~3″ wide peel-n-stick 36 grit sandpaper strips onto it, end-to-end.  To secure the board’s straightness, and give me a handle to grip, I screwed a 2×2 down the top (which I ripped on one side to ensure it too was straight).

Let the real pain begin!

As a level marker/guide coat I decided to use pencil vs spray paint, mainly because all the paint I have on hand has too long of cure times.  And I forgot to pick up some guide coat paint at the store.

No worries.  I grabbed my carpenter’s pencil and simply went to town on the right wing and strake tops (pic 1).  I then grabbed my stick o’ pain and started work from the leading edge aft on the right wing (pic 2).  I was a bit surprised at how many low spots I had, but that is the entire reason for using a guide coat in the first place, eh?

After a number of rounds of using the long sanding block, and then the 30″ boat-sanding block (with 4.5″ wide 3M Stikit 36 grit paper), I stopped when the wing’s micro surface was close to final level… I’d say over 90% final.

I then installed the aileron on the wing and the rudder on the winglet.

I spent the rest of the evening and most of today working to fine-tune and dial-in the intersecting seams of the aileron to wing and rudder to winglet.

Part of the effort on finalizing the right aileron finishing and install was mounting a clickbond in the middle of outboard hinge, in between the 2 existing screws.  I 3D printed a sanding block and prepped the clickbond for bonding.

Here’s a shot of the clickbond floxed in place and secured with a ply of BID and a ply of UNI (after cure).

I shot a video detailing what exactly I’m up to with adding this clickbond to the right aileron’s outboard hinge.  It also includes a project update at the current state of the build.

Tomorrow I’ll continue to press forward with sanding the micro-finish on the wings, strakes and winglets in my quest to get them finished and ready for paint.

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