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Well, you can't see the pencil marks I made for the
contour foam on the bottom but they're there. I was able to use a
couple of pieces of leftover foam to do this piece although that made for a
couple more joints than was probably necessary. |
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Sorry, Nat, but I can't bring myself to put blobs of
bondo on nice pieces of foam that I'm preparing to fiberglass over. I
like double stick tape. I made these jigs for the bottom curvature out
of 1x2 then double stick taped them to the bottom. |
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After all of those pieces were located on the bottom and
double stick taped on, I clamped them to the long boards. I then
drilled holes and screwed the jigs to the board. This allowed the
bottom to be pulled off and on a couple of times without troubles. |
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I made all of the bottom foam pieces for the contouring
using my bandsaw. Using a spacer and tilting the blade to the right
angle, I got nice straight even cuts. I assembled these pieces into
strips long enough for each of the pieces needed. For large pieces,
like the part under the front seat back, I used flat pieces then microed
formed pieces, made like above, to the edges to get the shape needed.
Same was true for the thick part where the nose wheel goes. |
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Lots of weights and clamps were used to hold the foam
parts in place while the micro cured. I did this in stages to get all
the parts lined up right. |
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I used a little extra micro on parts like this then used
a mixing stick to remove the excess/make a fillet. I knew I'd be
covering this with fiberglass eventually so I didn't mind getting micro in
the corner as I was sure it would help the glassing step. |
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Almost done with the contouring foam. Last couple
of pieces before the glass goes on. |
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It looks so nice at this stage you almost don't want to
do anything further to it! |
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After the bottom is glassed I didn't try to install it on
the bottom. I waited until it was cured, sanded it a bit (I had peel
plied the places where it needed to be floxed and taped) and installed it.
Here is is being weighted down to ensure good contact with the rest of the
fuselage. |
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After that cured, it really starts to look like a box,
not even a canoe or boat! |
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I did some of the BID tapes with the fuselage turned over
again to make it easier and keep the drips under control. |
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Lots of room in the back seat at this point. |
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I went ahead and built the rotisserie here. I had
seen a couple of other builders sites and noted that they had done this.
You can see some of the BID tapes installed here with peel ply strips over
them. The rotisserie really made doing this much easier. |
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Here's another shot of the rotisserie. I set the
leg length based on having the "top of the bottom of the fuselage" at a
comfortable working height. |
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A shot of the aft mount for the rotisserie. |
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Here's another shot of the BID tapes on the fuselage
bottom. |
| Chapter 6 - complete as of May 11, 2002
Click here for Chapter 7 |
