Saturday, June 7, 2008

07 Jun 08





Caroline and I glued onto the opposite half of the nose mold first thing this morning. It took a couple of hours, and Luke showed up right as we were getting it together. Luke and Caroline then put 5 coats of mold release wax on the flank mold, and I put a little body filler on to repair a couple of places. Hunt sanded the butterfly panel like a madman today, trying to get a slight haze out of the clearcoat. Luke, Caroline and I cut a bunch of pieces of woven veneer and taped them together around the mold, finishing up around lunchtime. After lunch, Caroline and I glued the taped veneer pieces together and cut our peel ply, bleeder ply, polyethylene, vacuum screen, and 40mil PVC sheet to fit the mold. Hunt came out to help us glue and seal the piece, which took over an hour for the 16' long piece. On such a large part, a bunch of minuscule leaks can add up to one big leak, so we really had to work our seal to get it pulled down all the way. I went to the Home Depot to get some more 40mil PVC, and Caroline and Hunt cut the pieces to get us ready to go on another glue-up. When I got back, Caroline and I cut the PVC sheet to fit the roof area of the nose mold and glued a part onto it. Hunt helped us get it pulled down, and then he and I spent an hour or so releasing the 2 pieces on the nose mold. We weren't sure if we were going to be able to release them easily, so we decided it would be better to try now before it gets any harder. After dinner, Caroline and I went to the Home Depot yet again to get some more 40mil PVC to save a run tomorrow, and I pulled the vacuums off the flank mold and the roof mold. I peeled the peel ply off the flank mold piece, which turned out great. Caroline helped me move a couple things under the lean-to, and we called it a night at about 10:15pm. It was a stiflingly hot day, but we got a lot done.

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