Worked on the fibreglass rudder bottom for the tail light fitment. First of all I drilled a 23mm diamter hole and then opened it up with a sanding drum on the dremel to take the Whelan strobe. Then I drilled out the mounting holes to #27 for a #6 screw. Next I drilled and countersuck #40 rivet attach holes for the MS-whatever short one legged #6 nutplates.
This was where the easy part stopped. I had two issues;-
Firstly, it is so tight and fiddly in there that I kept dropping the nutplate and struggling to get it into the right place.
Secondly, the quality of the fibreglass right in there is very poor, probably because it is so tight. So the result is that the nutplate would not sit flat on the inside. It took some scraping and swearing and deft work with the sanding drum again to get anything close to ok. I used CCC-30 blind rivets, but they were quite short and only just about up to the task.
Finally, I covered up the hole with tape, mixed up a good batch of structural epoxy and threw it in there. Hopefully that will settle into all the crooks and nannies and keep everything where it is supposed to be long term. I have some screws in the screw holes and I must remember to go and remove them before the whole thing is fully set in an hour or so (but I bet I don't!). Obviously I shall have to re-drill the big hole, but I don't see that as much of a problem. I might yet add some more epoxy/flox mix in there anyway (as opposed to the structural epoxy I used just now). Pictures when I'm done with it. Tomorrow maybe...
