Me and my co-pilot trying out the size of the fuselage |
Glassing the sides was fairly uneventful. It's a very short paragraph in the plans that took me about 9 hrs each side to accomplish. Thanks to my friend and co-worker Bryan who helped me with the starboard side. It only cut an hour off but having an extra set of hands sure made it easier.
I did have a little trouble on the port side so I'll offer a tip to help.
Left side: 23" wide 3rd ply for fuselage Right side: 3", 4", & 5" reinforcement strips |
Once taped, you can cut the strips apart down the center of the tape. Once glassed in place, simply fold the taped part up and run down the length with your electric scissors leaving a nice clean edge. Using this process, the starboard side came out much better. I'll be doing this with all my UND strips from now on.
A selected 6" x 6" area with air specks scattered throughout. |
After pulling off the peel-ply on the starboard side, I found that I had some small air specks in the layup.
The inspection criteria says that no more than 10% of any 6x6 section can have air. The pic to the left shows a sample 6x6 area. The trick is determining if you've reached that magic 10% coverage. The 10% rule is meant for critical areas like wings, canard, etc that take stress, unlike the fuselage tub sides. According to Marc Z from a forum email in 2006, you don't have to be as conservative outside of those critical areas. These tiny air pockets/specks don't meet the 10% rule so it's not an issue.
Ch 7 Done! Now to start adding stuff to the fuselage...fun fun!
cab