Bottom Skin

Step 5 APPLYING THE BOTTOM SKIN

Once the peel ply, plastic and tape (that wasn't stuck) was removed you can see what a job I have left to remove the rest of the tape. I used a combination of razor blade scrapers, sandpaper and tweezers to get it all off. I managed to do it without tearing up the foam too bad. I think, when I do the top spar cap, I will take off the tape before I peel ply and let it cure...

Here's a shot of the one end to give you a sense of how much tape stuck and how much came off.

Here's the canard bottom after much sanding and scraping. I have about 50% of the tape off at this point.

Once all of that lousy tape was removed, I was ready to apply (finally) the bottom skin. I started by turning the canard over and applying the grey tape called for in the plans. Knowing that some of the extra epoxy would cling to the front of the canard and run past the tape, I continued beyond the tape with clear packing tape to keep that epoxy off of the foam. I did not glue my canard to the jigs per plans, it sat in there very nice and didn't move without it (unless I lifted it and turned it over, of course.)

I went ahead and laid plastic below the canard to keep the mess down during the bottom skin layup. Wasn't enough, though, see the later pictures.

Since most of my jig table was consumed with the canard, I used my workbench to cut the UNI for the canard bottom skin. Don't worry - I vacuumed it first, then wiped it down with spray cleaner and towels until it was perfectly clean. I used tape, per the plans, to keep the edges from unraveling. If I were to do this again - I'd use 1" tape vice 2" - the 2" was pretty hard to get off and therefore ruined the glass it was stuck to. Use thin tape (maybe even 1/2" or 1/4" if you have it) then just cut if off when you've laid on that piece of glass.

I also added some plastic on the ends and clamped some paint stirs to, again, keep the mess under control. You can see in this shot all the tape has finally been removed...

The plans say to use nails to affix a piece of 1" peel ply to the trailing edge on the bottom. Lots of people report having trouble getting the nails or staples out so I thought I would try something different.

My personal favorite for things like this - double stick tape. I have a bunch of rolls of this thin 3M stuff they sell for putting window plastic up in the winter. Works pretty good - let you know how it turns out when we get ready to take off this strip of peel ply.

Here's the canard bottom microed and ready for the bottom skin. The peel ply is stuck on with double stick (didn't move during the layup, by the way.)

After the first UNI layer and first BID layer. I had a little trouble with this one joint - no it's not an overlapped joint but as we squeegeed we ended up with some of the fibers kind of twisted around (under the UNI) so they made sort of a bump.

Layup done, peel ply on and cure happening. Turned out pretty good, Kelly helped me and the layup took about 2 1/2 hours or so.

Here's the spot where the BID moved around a bit under the UNI. A little bump, but, nothing a little micro fill won't help, I hope. Too late to do it over.

After all my attempts to get plastic around the canard to prevent drips, I had a bunch. The only problem with these is they pull off the paint on the floor after they cure! Oh, well. that's why I have a workshop.

I removed the canard from its jigs, removed all the tape and so forth (packing tape kept the front underneath clean) and sanded the trailing edge straight per plans. It's not like a ruler, but it's pretty good.

Just for grins, I used my new laser level to shine a beam down the trailing edge to see how straight it was. Realized that was probably overkill, but, my son still had fun making his finger look like ET's!

Sanding the trailing edge. I did shine the laser level beam down the trailing edge to check if it was straight or not. Decided it was about as straight as I could make it without buying a milling machine with a 10' bed to true it up...

That completes Step 5 - on to Step 6!