28 Jun 08

I put some tessellated balsa strips down on the door panel molds, beveled their edges, and smoothed them out with body filler first thing this morning. Luke worked on assembling the comb that will sort the veneer strips before they enter the heddle eyes of the loom. Ben showed up, sorted through our fiberglass resin jugs for a while, and helped me lay up another layer on the chin of the body plug outside. While we let this layer kick, we came inside to put a final layer of chopped strand mat over the balsa and body filler. After we ate lunch, Ben, Caroline and Luke started on resin-infusing a new windshield header on our nose mold. While they prepared everything for this, I planed some cherry backer board and ripped it to width. I used this stock to trim out the lining of the intake hole on each side of the car. I used 2 layers of 1/8" thick cherry, overlapping the miters between the 2 layers. I had the pieces cut for both sides with 1 side glued on when I went out to check on the infusion. The guys and girl had everything set up well, and the resin flowed quickly through the 1"+ thick laminate. When we finished this, Caroline headed to Home Depot to get some supplies for tomorrow while Luke took the clamps off his comb. Ben and I put 3 more layers of chopped strand mat down over the chin mold to potentially finish it off. We broke for dinner, and Ben and I came back out to glue the cherry backer on the inside lip of the intake hole on the other side of the car. We cleaned up outside and finished at about 10:30pm.