Glassing Outside

Step 3 GLASSING THE OUTSIDE OF THE SHOULDER SUPPORT

I used my router and router table to round the corner of the shoulder support before glassing the outside. Makes a nice, consistent rounded edge hopefully making the final product look nicer!

As written in the previous step, I pre-installed the top harness bolt nutplates and aluminum inserts. After doing the inside surface glassing, I didn't want the nutplates' weight causing them to hang down and ruin the inside layup by pulling it away from the foam. This was easily prevented by installed, finger tight, the bolts that would be used for the harnesses with a plywood spacer inserted between.

Top harness bolts installed; no problems so far, let the cure begin!

One piece of fiberglass I used for the outside layup was way too short. I ended up with about 2" of exposed shoulder support at the passenger's side right shoulder. This wouldn't work, so, I took those layups off with a hair dryer and pliers and did them over.

Part way through heat removing the outside glass layup.

After I finished removing the outside layup, I did some sanding and scraping to be sure the foam was ready for the next layup.

I used paper towels to prevent the epoxy from getting into the threads of the nutplates. Bad idea. The epoxy soaks in and makes an epoxy laminate paper towel. Better idea would have been silicone caulk like recommended in Chapter 10.

I rotated the fuselage back and forth as I re-did this layup to make things a little easier. It was hard bending over to reach the middle without rotating the fuse like this.

My shoulder support ended up a small fraction of an inch below the longeron, when it did a nice air bubble formed there. I was able to eliminate it by using two tape-covered boards held down by a couple of weights.

Here's the 3-layer UNI layup the plans changes tell you to install. Not too hard, but, I tried to keep it neat since you'd see this area a lot.

That completes glassing the outside, next step is Harness Attachments