Glass Sides

Here's a good shot of the rotisserie ends. This is after sanding before starting on glassing the sides.

More sanding before glassing the sides.

The last layup was way too hard and took way too long. Here's a shot me and Kelly, my wonderful wife, who volunteered to helped me with the side layups. These went so much better this way!

The first side layup completed and peel plied. I have to admit - the quality was way better. Kelly hadn't even done this yet up to this point, but it went so much faster and better with her helping I'll never do these big layups by myself again. Not shown but handy were some wooden sticks, which my wife nicknamed PIA sticks, about 45" long, with weather stripping attached that we use to hold the glass on either end, pulling it against one another to make the layup and fibers as straight as possible. Oreste Mucili came up with this idea, although his sticks are probably engraved he's such a craftsman.

Here's another shot of the completed side layup. I used a piece of plywood, cut to size and taped to prevent sticking, over the fuel windows to make sure the glass stayed in there as the layup cured.

Here's the side after a nice knife trim. I don't do this enough - probably because I do too many layups by myself and end up working all night. Then, knife trim is ready at about 3 am and I'm not about to get up and do it. In this case, since the layup went so much better and quicker, I was able to knife trim later that evening. Makes clean up much easier, not so much cutting and sanding even if you have a Fein sander.

We did the sides in two steps - the 3 (2 crossing and one full length) layer one first, then, the 3 uni along the longerons second (using peel ply to ready the glass for the next step.) I was so paranoid about doing the whole thing at once I did it separate. This shot shows the 3 layer UNI reinforcing layup across the top edge after completing it. Don't try to do this all in one layup (layup 3 layers on the bench then transfer) as it will slide off onto the floor and you'll have to do it over!

First side peel plied after the 3 layer UNI layup.

Other side peel plied after the 3 UNI reinforcing layup.

One side after the engine mount reinforcing layups.

Other side after the engine mount reinforcing layups.

I'm going to build at least two Cozys by the time I'm done

While monitoring the Cozy e-mail group and reading the newsletter, I realized I didn't taper my fuselage properly. DON'T DO YOUR COZY LIKE THIS!

Too much foam! Yours should not look like this!

I have to, at some time in the future, remove some fiberglass, re-taper the fuselage (there should be a glass-wood bond at the aft end of the longerons and at LWY) and then re-glass with the appropriate number of layers and overlap.

Need to re-shape this foam after removing fiberglass layers over it

It seems like I figured not as much foam gets removed in front of the centersection spar and strake so this wasn't important. It should be, however, because (refer to M-7 and M-8 drawings) show that the glass should be glass-wood bonds on the longerons and LWY.

Longeron from the top showing too much foam

A shot from the top. THIS IS NOT CORRECT DON'T DO YOURS THIS WAY!

A ruler added to get a sense for how much foam I have to remove

A shot with a ruler added to help with visualizing how much foam needs to be removed. I will probably re-do these parts when I get the center section spar test installed.

Chapter 7 - complete (well, I have to redo the aft end of the fuselage as listed above, but construction is complete) as of January 16, 2003. Click here for Chapter 8, Headrests