Chapter 25 – The Boring Things

Soooo… yeah…. it’s been rather chilly here over the past few weeks.  Weather temps typically ranging from teens to low 40’s (°F).   For those tracking my build that are not in the states, we had a pretty good ODD winter snowstorm here on the shores of eastern NC.

Here’s my shop under a blanket of snow.

We have had an odd “warmer” day here and there (in the 50’s) and I’ve got a little bit done in the shop, such as wet sanding, that doesn’t require me to have those monster torpedo heaters on full time.  Needless to say I’ve been getting some non-airplane build stuff knocked out.

Here’s my front yard and driveway.

One of those things I’ve been working on, which I don’t need much more than a heat lamp to keep things warm, is my buddy Guy’s prop that got crunched when his airplane went up on its ‘tails’ during a condition inspection (If you recall, I repaired his aft lower winglets).  Well, his Silver Bullet prop also was drug into the melee and suffered a dinged tip.

Here’s how the ding tipped should look as compared to the other side.  These pics were mainly taken to query both Marc Zeitlin and Gary Hertzler on suggested fix actions.

After going back and forth with Gary Hertzler a few times, he recommended using JB Weld as the agent to fix this prop ding.  Here I’ve attached a taped stir stick to the bottom side of the prop (relatively, as it’s sitting here) and after cleaning the tip with Acetone, slathered on some JB weld.  I then left it to cure a minimum of 24 hours.

And here’s the JB Weld-repaired prop tip after sanding, both sides.  Now it’s ready for paint.

On my bird (with the WX warming up) I carefully filled in the thin spots of micro around the perimeter of each wing leading edge landing light, mainly on the side edge of the wing light pocket opening where it intersects the carbon fiber flange, but in a few areas I needed some fill on the the top edge as well.  I then epoxy wiped the filled cleco holes and the immediate surrounding area around the wing LE light openings.

I also re-epoxy wiped the top of the left winglet, where I installed 2x threaded inserts that will serve to secure a video camera bracket.

On the top cowl intersection with the strake, I did some fills on both sides.  On the left (pic 1) I did a minor fill on the cowl front edge whereas on the right side (pic 2) all the fills were on the strake side, both outboard edge and also a good bit on the inboard shoulder bump.

Yes, trying to knock out all the minor micro fill stuff as I press forward to get ALL the micro finishing done on this bird.

Praying for warm weather here in NC!

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