On Monday I turned over the panels to do the last side. Once again, I had to do a lot of scraping with a cabinet scraper to deal with epoxy that had seeped under the panel, and cutting with the carpet knife to try to restore the original edges of the piece. Rob came over to see how it was going, and it was good to have somebody to talk to while I worked, although it did distract me. I actually mixed the epoxy and was getting ready to apply it when I realized I hadn’t put any plastic wrap underneath, and was in danger of sticking the pieces to the work bench. Fortunately with two of us working it didn’t take long to put the plastic wrap under.
This fourth side benefited from the experiences from the other three, so it went pretty quickly and well. The only problem was that it also was harmed by how ratty the mylar sheets were – I got some voids because of gunk stuck to them, and because they’ve started to turn up at the edges a bit. Definitely next time I’ll buy enough mylar to use new ones each time.
Tuesday I finished that job, again with lots of cabinet scraper and sanding block and carpet knife action. And it was too cold to epoxy, which was just fine because I spend another half hour or so trimming the pieces that are going to be glued under the cockpit to reinforce it. It’s kind of strange that the kit comes with all these CNC cut plywood pieces, and then just two chunks of uncut plywood and instructions to cut the reinforcement (and later the seat) out of them. You’d think they’d cut all of the pieces.
Next job is gluing those pieces on, and then bevelling the shear edges. I’m not 100% sure how I’m going to do that. I suspect a Shure-form tool would be too agressive.
Next time?
Next time?