First thing I started on today was the removing of the right side of the canopy rail. As I mentioned earlier the adhesion of the paint on the oanopy rail area was marginal towards the front of the area. When we taped to it during the windscreen fairing the problem became evident as paint came off with the tape. Anyway, the left side came off last session and this one was removed this session. I then scraped paint off after matking the outside of the canopy rails to make certain the paint was stripped to a point under the rail. I just looked for the problem paint areas as the 3M film will cover the entire rail area from front to back. After stripping the paint I feathered the edges with sandpaper.
Next I moved on to the cowl. I removed the oil door and mixed up a batch of SuperFil and coated the top of the door. The fiberglass pretty much took the surface up even with the cowl but I wanted to put a coat of SuperFil to fill in any imperfections. The door also looked like it may be kind of low towards the hinge end of the door so I just wanted to be sure I could sand it to a full surface with minimal imperfections to refill after. That is curing.
Finally I wanted to address the trailing edge of the cowl. I went a little too aggressive when trimming the cowl on about 3 inches of the left side when I was fitting it. So I scarfed the inside and outside of the cowl. I cut three pieces of fiberglass and made a form to follow the outside of the cowl out of aluminum. I then made another piece of aluminum to sandwich it all together to conform the fglass to the cowl. Wet the fglass and laid it up with peel ply and the aluminum that was covered with packing tape. Letting it cure.....see what it looks like tomorrow.
