Brief Description: Rework of Left Aileron and Flap
Not much accomplished this past month. With the birth of my grandson Ethan and the subsequent travel back and forth to Maryland, it was not possible to do very much. Upon arrival back home, Carroll and I knew we had some work to do trying to get the shaping done on the leading edges of the left wing control surfaces. It seems that we were more than just a little low in our hot wiring of the foam. Even with a liberal application of micro balloon slurry it was evident that the control surfaces would be unacceptably heavy. So, we decided to re-cut the leading edges.
Our trouble was that with our homemade hot wire cutter we would not be able to cut them without blemishes that would still cause us problems. The solution was actually pretty simple ( even though it took us almost 10 days to figure it out). We simply made a template of the rib tips and cut out an over sized pair of templates from plywood. It was then just a matter of attaching them to the ribs and hot wiring an over sized piece of foam to be sanded down after epoxying in place. It worked out well and now we have a correct shape to match the ribs.
I don't feel bad about removing the Aileron foam work already done after seeing the result of the Flap work. We still have to sand the foam down to the rib shape, but the result will be an almost perfect shape to apply the carbon fiber on. Tomorrow will be the final shaping
Pretty bad low spots that would take way too much micro slurry to fill.
Oversized rib tip templates.
recut and epoxied in place. tomorrow final shaping. the template worked great!
