Chapter 7 – Skinning the Fuselage

And so begins the final chapter in the saga of glassing the fuselage … or should I say the final step . . . of the chapter!

I pulled an all-nighter to glass the fuselage.  The first the few hours were of course all about prepping EVERYTHING to get ready to actually start glassing.

Chapter 7 - Prepping fuselage for skinning

I cut two sets of 3″ UNI strips at 50″, 52″ & 50″ and set them up “pre-preg”.

I cut 2 pieces UNI for the third ply on fuselage & wrapped/rolled in brown paper.

Chapter 7 - Glass for skinning fuselage

I cut a UNI roll at 30° on the end and took it out the garage.

By the time I actually got started glassing, it was about 1930 in the evening.  I glassed straight through until about 1430 the next day, after peel-plying critical areas and seams and trimming glass so it would cure nicely at the edges.  In that whole time I may have take about four 5-7 min bathroom/snack/water breaks.  Being by myself (minus the 10-minutes my buddy Kevin stopped by and took some pics with my camera), it was definitely a marathon glassing session.  In retrospect, if I glass another fuselage by myself, I’ll most likely either stop half-way through, or pre-cut all my glass so it’s ready to go!!

Chapter 7 - Skinning the fuselage

Chapter 7 - Skinning the fuselage

Chapter 7 - Skinning the fuselage

Chapter 7 - Skinning the fuselage

Chapter 7 - Skinning the fuselage

Chapter 7 - Glassing the fuselage

Chap 7 - Glassing the Fuselage

Chapter 7 - Skinning the fuselage

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