After pulling the peel ply off the sides, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. The sides looked pretty good and I didn't even have any air bubbles in the control stick depressions that I fully expected.
That's not to say there weren't problems. I did a terrible peel ply job. I should have split the peel ply into two pieces and dealt with one side at a time...too many peel ply wrinkles and bubbles....fortunately those are easy fixes and primarily cosmetic. I also found a couple of air bubbles on the aft edge that were easily fixed with hot epoxy and a syringe. The real issue was the aft area about 2-6 inches forward of the firewall location on both sides....those darn air specks showed up again. :-( Hmmm, how did this happen.
After reviewing my process that day, I think I figured out what happened. I laid out all the raw glass for the second ply before I began to wet it any of it out. The last area I got to with the epoxy was the aft end of both sides. I think that the raw glass may have pulled too much of the epoxy from the underlying first ply which created specks of air. By the time I got to the aft end with epoxy, these specks of air were too dried into the first ply to get out.
I stared at the area for 15 min's or so and then decided the area may not meet the inspection criteria. Since this area is deemed a critical area (per plans "all fuselage areas within 10" of the firewall"), I decided I had to do something about it. So I sanded down the worse areas to the foam on each side and re-glassed with 2-ply of 30 degree UND and the plans called for 1-ply of BID as a repair topper. The repair looks good...onward!
cab
No comments:
Post a Comment