Chapter 7 – Fuselage Exterior

I pulled the peel ply from yesterday’s layups.  Overall, everything looked great. I marked some punch list items and I’ll probably have to add another BID tape a place or two, but it all looks real solid.

I’ve had an observer while I’ve been working the past few hours:

I think he’s been whispering, “Maybe you should have installed the wood block for the landing brake before you installed the fuselage bottom . . .”   (shut up!)  Oh, well.

I gathered and prepped all the tools I thought I would need for carving & shaping the fuselage bottom.  This is big, and I don’t want to muck it up!  So I’ve reread the plans about 5 times just to make sure I know EXACTLY what I’m doing . . .  AND I’m 100% sure that I THINK I know what I’m doing!!  So I dove in!

I started sanding and shaping the fuselage at the bottom corners to turn it from something that is basically square, and give it some curves.  This took quite a while.  I had to readjust the templates a number of times. Finally, to maintain a baseline on the templates I mounted a small level bubble on them so I could always start in the same plane at each point along the corner edge.

I got about 80% of the right-hand side and about 40% of the left-hand side (remember, it’s upside down) completed before I called it a night.