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Step 4 SPAR CAP LAYUP |
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Ready for the spar cap layup,
the canard bottom has been taped and has plastic laid over it. I
solicited the help of my beautiful wife Kelly for this layup - just to help
lay out the spar cap tape. I think I can handle the epoxying - this
won't take that long. |
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I made a short set of "PIA"
sticks (pain in the a**) as my wife calls them. They are just short
pieces of wood with some rubber weather stripping stapled on. Used in
pairs like a vise (one on top of the glass, one on the bottom) they allow
you to stretch/straighten UNI or spar cap tape glass as you lay it on. |
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Per plans I ran a micro bead on
the corners to make the spar cap tape stay in the channel. |
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My favorite method of doing
micro fillets is with a syringe...to get the micro evenly distributed... |
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then I use a stir stick to get
a nice fillet. You can change the angle of the stick as you drag it
along to get a fatter or skinnier fillet. |
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I used my work stand roller to
make a nice roller for the spar cap tape to roll out as we used it. |
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The first layer of spar cap
tape is in the channel, epoxied and squeegeed. |
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Here we are laying on the
second layer, you can see it is just a couple of inches shorter than the
first one. Nat's plans say you can cut the ends on an angle to get
them to fill in nice, but, I found that the straight cuts worked the best
for me. |
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Pulling more tape off of the
roll and laying it on. No gloves here - I took them off when we laid
out the spar cap tape. |
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Credit card suqeegees are
perfect for smaller work like this. You can see that if you get the
spar trough filled properly, it lines up exactly with the foam on either
side of it. The blue masking tape (the quick release kind) didn't come
off at all for this part of the layup, worked great. |
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Here's the trough filled all
the way. It was time to take off the tape, but, for some reason I
decided to leave it on there. DON'T DO YOURS THIS WAY! TAKE THE
TAPE OFF! |
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So, like a dummy I left the
tape on, peel plied the whole thing and walked away. |
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Cured, with tape still on.
What a dumb thing to do! I had to scrape and sand and pick and scrape
to get it back off. Most of it came off, but, the 1/4" or so next to
the trough ended up epoxied to the foam and was really had to get off.
Stupid, stupid, stupid! |
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On to the canard bottom skin! |
