Today was one of those days in the workshop where I couldn’t seem to locate my motivation. I know it is somewhere out there, but for whatever reason it eluded me the entire time. Never the less I did spend a bit of time out there.
The biggest thing I got done was making a hinge for the oil check door for the cowl. I decided not to use a piano hinge, and to use a “question mark style hinge.” This hinge style will make the finishing easier, and the seam around the door more consistent. So I made a mock up out of 1/4 inch masonite to determine the shape that was needed. This was then duplicated and the pair was used to hot wire a “mold” out of blue foam.
I used my lathe to make a bushing of aluminum for the pivot point for the hinge piece. This was bonded into the hinge using the mold. Here you can see basically the final shape of the hinge after the epoxy cured and the edges were trued and sanded. I used a combination of glass and carbon. You have to use glass to insulate the aluminum from the carbon to prevent galvanic (dissimilar metal) corrosion.
The hinge will be bonded to the oil check door in a manner similar to this. The location may slightly change, but the idea is as shown in this photo. The hinge works in much the same way that the hinge on the fuel filler door works on your car. After that happens, we just need to bond in the matching features on the inside of the cowl, and it will be operational. The sheet wax around the oil check door is to create an even seam all around the door when we apply micro.
Lastly, I prep sanded the cowl and made some of the aluminum forms for the cowl seams. The forward one is large and requires a bit more tweaking, but we are getting close to there. Hopefully tomorrow we can get those done and micro on the cowl. Would be nice to get the cowl white and sanded out.
the Garaggio 