Window Edging

I've been holding off on writing this blog until I finished up the task. Well, it took A LOT longer than what it was supposed to. 

Dates and Times

April

Wed 30 -1.5hrs- finished light wiring 

May

Sat 3  -5.5hrs- window edging prep

Sun 4 -5.5hrs- window edging laid up

Mon 5 -1.5hrs- window sanding and disaster

Tues6 -1.0hr- sanding off old stuff

Wed 7 -1.25hrs- more sanding

Sat 10 -6.5hrs- window prep and laid up new layer of fiberglass

Sun 11 -3.0hrs- more sanding

Tues13 -0.5hr- more sanding

Sat 17 -2.5hrs- so much sanding

Sun 18 -3.0hrs- more sanding and cleaned out the shop

I started off masking and sanding all of the windows. I used the same tape as I did for the windscreen fairing.

A closer shot of everything taped off. I used the same little jig tool to draw a line around the window offset from the edge to place the tape. The radius's at each corner are from circles I printed off on paper of many different sizes. I then cut out the radius I wanted which made a good template for the curve.

Here is a shot of the edge of the door. You can see how I placed tape around the entire perimeter of the door, two layers of duct tape and a layer of electrical tape. I then cut it even with the outer skin of the door. This will result in an even gap around the entire door. You can also see in this picture how the door has a nice sloping curve and the cabin top does not resulting in a slight misalignment.

I then taped around the edge of the door and onto the outer skin to prevent fiberglass adhering to the door itself. In this image you can also see a flat spot on the cabin top in relation to the door....its right in the middle of the picture.

With everything taped up I laid my first bit of fiberglass. First I filled the gaps around the edges of the windows and then laid 2" fiberglass cloth down. The strips were cut from the same type cloth used in the windscreen. I only did around the top of the windscreen and the back windows at this point.

The next day I came out to start sanding everything down when I discovered that nothing was sticking. The glass cloth was peeling off in strips....not good.

This resulted in days of sanding and scraping to get all the old stuff off the plane. It was a major pain in the butt and very disappointing. This set me back a few weeks of work.

I think I know what happened:
1. Original: sanded with orbital sander and 60 grit paper. The orbital didn't "scratch" up the surface enough. New Layup: used 60 grit paper and sanded in 90 degree patterns creating a "scratched" cross pattern around the entire perimeter.

2. Original: cleaned with acetone and therefore smoothed out the ridges from sanding.
New Layup: cleaned with just water.

3. Original: Laid cloth down and applied a thickened epoxy. I was thinking of preventing runs but resulted in cloth not absorbing enough of the resin to harden and adhere properly.
New Layup: wetted entire perimeter with just epoxy and then did a very wet layup of the fiberglass using non thickened epoxy.

The second time I did this the layup looked much nicer than the first. Practice is everything.

This time I also picked up a flexible sanding block and adhesive backed paper. The sanding block is very important to getting a nice gentle curve. VERY important...basically not possible without it.

The second layup stood up to the sanding and trying to peel it off. So with my new sanding block I started sanding, sanding, and sanding. Here is a picture of the old intersection I showed above. Looks much nicer now.

An overall picture. So much sanding. I am not really enjoying this part. Fiberglass dust is awfull stuff.

I finally got a point that I can say I am finished for now. The dust was so bad in the shop dunes were starting to form. I just pulled everything out and blew it off with the air hose. My next goal is to finish a few things up in the tail so I can rivet that last skin on. Then I will finish the rest of the body work for good.

Windscreen Fairing

Earlier this week I came down with something that could only be described as...the plague....I felt awful, worse than I have felt in a long, long time. I'll save you the gruesome details, but rest easy because I have made a full recovery and am back to building the plane. 

This weekend I made the windscreen fairing. A tedious but easy job. It took an entire day to prep the windscreen and an entire day to lay the fiberglass and smooth everything out. 

Date and Time

Sat-Sun 26-27th -9.0hrs- All was fairing work except a little less than an hour trying to get some string to go through the conduit. I tried blowing it through with a bit of wadded tissue....didn't work...tried again...didn't work....tried again....huh, didn't work.....what if I just blow the string through without the tissue....that worked....wow did I make that more difficult than it needed to be. I now have string through the conduit to pull the wires from the tailcone!

First I marked 1in from the bottom of the windscreen. I made a little jig to help make a perfect measured line. 

Then I taped off the windscreen and scuffed the exposed edges with 80 grit. The tape I used is a 20mil PVC tape.....awesome stuff. It'll curve to the window and is very adhesive and durable. 

Here is a close up of the radius I will be making at the corners. 

I cut all the strips out using one of those "pizza cutter" style fiber glass cutters, they are well worth having. 

All the layers went down really easy. I did one constant strip across the entire width. That seemed easier to me to do it this way instead of splitting them as the instructions show. The epoxy is black from the dye. You only need a very small amount of that stuff in each mixture. 

The shape turned out really nice. I first layed down a bead of flox resin with a syringe at the edge of the windscreen. I then started applying the strips as a wet layup. The resin was thickened to a syrup consistancy with flox. As I started getting closer to the last of the ten layers I would try and smooth things out and fill areas with flox that weren't shaping the way I wanted them to. On the last layers I started using regular cab-o-sil as the thickener since it's a bit easier to sand. For a final shaping I made a big batch of epoxy mixed with the lightweight faring thickener and smoothed that on as evenly as I could using a flexible plastic scrapper. I'm pretty happy with the results but the true test is when I start sanding. 

More Window Work and a Doubler

It's Easter weekend and Jess's parents came down to visit their grandchild, oh and us too, I guess. It was a beautiful weekend with relaxing in the sun, ham dinner, home brewed beer, and of course Easter egg hunting. With all the sitting around staring at each other my father in-law and I got a little bored, so why not work on the plane a little bit. I needed the help to install a doubler so it worked out really well that they were here.

Dates and Times

Fri 18th -2.5hrs- Installed doubler
Sat 19th -2.5hrs- Glued windscreen, fillet around window

Here is the view from the bottom of the plane. This will be my transponder antenna doubler. If you remember this is the spot where I dropped that bucking bar and made a huge dent in the bottom skin. Well, two dents actually. A large dent that was drilled out to create the aft most screw hole and a smaller dent forward of that, that became a rivet hole. All in all it's a happy ending to a disastrous event. You'd never know it happened now. 

View from the inside looking down. The location is just aft of the baggage bulkhead and just to the right of the battery mount. You can see the rivet that is out of pattern with the rest that is the location of the second dent. 

We also glued the windscreen in place. I installed it with the same method as the rest of the windows. One thing we did on this window, that I did on the others as well, was sand the edges smooth with 220 grit sandpaper before installing.  

After a disastrous attempt at creating a fillet with just my finger....it was bad and every time I tried making it better it just got worse. I had to clean up everything I did with paint thinner and a plastic scrapper. It was a horrible nerve racking event. I thought for a second I ruined the window. This time I decided to tape off where I wanted the fillet to end and then apply the adhesive, wait a bit, and then remove the tape for a nice straight edge. There is some detailing left to do but it gave me a good starting point. 

Of course there was some Easter egg hunting fun!

Installing the Windows

Continuing to catch up on my posts. 

I installed all of my windows. I got some Lord Adhesive from Geoff at Aerosport. The adhesive and it's gun are really easy to use; no mixing, measurements, or messes. 

Time and Date

Sunday 13th -5.25hrs- Glued door and back windows in place. 

First thing I did was position the window in the recess and place tape following the edge of the frame. Then remove the window and sand the perimeter. The tape helps protect the area you shouldn't be sanding. Note the inner plastic has been removed.  

I made little tabs and drilled holes all the way around the perimeter of the window. These allow an even pressure around the entire window.

At this point I haven't glued in the windscreen yet but I thought I'd take a picture of it cut to shape. Note the black paint on the the glareshield as well.

 Here is a close up of one of the tabs. These worked really well. Very easy to do.

All in all gluing in the windows was no big deal. Any cleanup I just used the thinner from the interior paint I purchased a while back. It didn't hurt the plexiglass and cleaned up the adhesive really well. 

Windows, Back Seats, Fans

Oy.... I'm a bit behind on posting my progress and I seemed to have accidentally deleted some of my time log, so some of the hours will be estimated. This will be a short post with very little info, sorry. 

March

29th -30th Approx. 6.0hrs 

April

5th -6th Approx. 8.0hrs

8th -1.25hrs- Finished building seats

9th -1.25hrs- Installed brake resevoir and brake lines down gear leg, cut window clamps

12th -4.25hrs- Cut holes for avionics fans. Glued one window 

I cut all of the windows out. Nothing special, I just followed the plans. I am using the regular Vans windows. I made the initial cut with a cut off wheel and then went back and shaped with a sander. The windows are marked for where you need to cut them and for me the marks were very close. 

I built the back seats. Followed the plans. Very easy. 

Once I had the front window cut out I was able to mark where it layed on the upper fuselage. I then located where I wanted to place my fans keeping in mind the clearance I would need to get an allen wrench under the windscreen to install the fan's screws. I am using some high performance 80mm computer fans. They run on 12vdc and are compact enough to fit under the glareshield and not interfere with the other avionics that will be installed there. These fans serve two purposes 1) cooling the avionics behind the the instrument panel and 2) act as defrosters and removing moisture on the windscreen. The area is masked off because I painted the area black. Eventually I will have a glareshield cover but the paint will help hide any of the small areas the cover....well....doesn't cover.