You know those Magic Eye paintings? Yea, the ones that look like some randomized, repetitive pattern. But… if you squint your eyes just right, an image appears? The Ez is starting to look just like that to me. I had one of those moments today when Greg and I put the cowl back on, and I stepped back to take a look. I didn’t even have to squint and, in the words of the Weasel, “You don’t just have a pile of foam in the Garaggio, you have an inverted Ez.” (photo rotated so you don’t have to stand on your head.)
Today saw a lot of progress in the Garaggio. I started by putting the next coats of primer on the cowl and landing brake. It ended up being 4 coats each. I did pay special attention to the areas that were proving to be slightly low by adding extra primer in those location in between coats. While I was doing this, Greg arrived to help for the day.
I was giving him the tour of progress and the priming ritual when he reminded me that 1) all of this primer is sacrificial, 2) that we are flying in primer and a lot of the finishing work is going to be repeated before painting, and 3) the majority of this primer will probably have to be sanded off in order for the paint to stick. That kind of put things back into perspective a little bit. Even in primer, I do want to be proud of the EZ when it is on the flight line at Oshkosh, but I don’t have to obsess over details that will eventually be worked out. So I stopped at 4 coats today, instead of the 6 I had planned on.
While I was working on that, Greg went around the rest of the fuselage and touched up the contour sanding of the epoxy wipe. He was pretty satisfied with what Ryan and I did last night, so he then switched gears to look for any shiny areas of epoxy. These would be the areas that are slightly low, and as such we didn’t scuff up with the long boards. We have a choice when we find these areas. Either we can take the whole surface down to that level, or raise the area of the shiny surface to meet its surroundings. At this point, we had burned though the epoxy wipe into raw micro in some areas meaning we had contoured as far into the surface as was possible. So Greg used scotchbrite to scuff up the remaining shiny areas for better primer adhesion.
When I was done with priming, I switched to contouring mode. I worked on the gear leg fairings that Ryan and I filled last night. They took some effort, and require a little bit more sanding. I only contoured the ‘bottom’ side of the gear legs, and roughed in the ‘top’ side. It was awkward sanding the ‘top’ side of the gear leg as we are upside down and it required me to lay on the strake and sand over head. I figure I can do this once it is right side up.
Lastly, we looked for any last remaining divots, mouse bites, and deep flaws in the surface and filled them with micro light. (We had remaining micro light so we also did a fill on the inside of the induction inlet.)
After cure, this was then sanded out flush with the fuselage surface. The fuselage and strakes were then washed with soapy water and rinsed with clean water….. you can only wait in anticipation of what that means. I know I am.
Oh… and I also did the epoxy wipe on the gear doors. Gnight!
the Garaggio 