10/24/2002

Upper Wing decks...

Continuation of the 'Peacock' cutting of the decking to help follow the airfoil of my ribs, and also to find the correct intersection with the fuselages on either side. Once the right side was figured out, the left one was a piece of a cake, as each new piece could be just cut 'mirrored' to match the right one.

I had a little bit of a 'chicken or the egg' problem when I finished cutting out the decking parts. I wanted them to all snug up to each other, lay correctly in the positions they needed to be, and be flush to the plank next to it. An option first was to start gluing down the planks, one by one, against the ribs, and then trying to sand the airfoil smooth across all joints....blah, sounded like allot of work. Finally, it dawned on me to temporarily hold seems pretty flush with each other with some masking tape, then to tack glue them to each other with thin CA. Then, the entire deck could be removed later to be sanded off the plane, that is, if the decking would lay flat.

Well, my theory worked great. After the planks were glued to each other, the entire decking could be removed easily and sanded nice and smooth. Shown below is an old 4 foot diameter 1/4 inch plate glass table top, that works great for tasks like this. Included is the 2 foot Permagrit sanding block used for the task. Also, now with both decks off of the plane, they could be sandwiched to each other, and trued up to ensure the curved intersection with the center fuselage was mirrored on both sides.

Time for gluing. A pretty thick mixture of West Epoxy and CAB-O-SIL laid a nice bead on top of the ribs to grip the decks. I wanted to hold just gentle pressure on the decking, but not deform it. A couple blankets worked perfectly to distribute just a little weight.

The last 2 shots are final progress shots. These pics will have to be my encouragement for the next long haul. Having gotten the top to this point, it's now time to flip the critter over, and get the bottom caught up. I have to admit, when we flipped it over after taking the below shots, and saw the mostly unfinished bottom, it sure felt like we had just stepped backwards 3 months. Oh well, time to break back into the 5 gallon bucket of filler and get to slopping mud again. :-)

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