Today’s workshop session was cut short. Kevin and I had plans to go to the, “Great Minnesota Get Together,” aka the Minnesota State Fair. Well known for its food selection, you can pretty much get anything you want to eat. Most novelty foods come on a stick. One of the foods there is the Elephant Ear. Think funnel cake shaped like its name sake. Kevin had to have one. It got me thinking, today’s workshop session was pretty much eating a whole elephant ear. We got a lot done.
Jon and Greg were able to come over, and we were able to divide and conquer. I worked on sanding the bottom side of the wings and Jon and Greg got the canard and elevators ready for epoxy wiping. Since Jon is pretty well fed up with anything involving sanding, he epoxy wiped the elevators and canard.
Greg came and helped me finish the sanding on the bottom of the wings. The good news is, the bottom of the wings sanded out perfectly. Or darn close. I did sand through the primer in one small area, but since there is an epoxy wipe underneath, the only problem with this is it is slightly ugly. I will probably add a small amount of primer here eventually. However, it was time to move on.
We took the wings out of the stands to make it easier to sand the primer on the top/inboard surfaces of the wing and winglet. We spent some time sanding the right wing.
There were a handful of places we identified that needed a quick bit of filler. So we used the spot putty to fill them. One of them was a big area that was a discontinuity between the blended winglet and the wing. We added quite a bit of filler here. It should sand out well. Probably two more coats of primer on this wing and it will be in its flying primer. We also got the control surfaces sanded out, and they need another few coats of primer.
Big progress is happening. We are still working towards getting the airplane finishing done by the time we can’t work with the doors open in the workshop. Which in Minnesota could be any day now. Cheers to eating the elephant ear, and the foods at the state fair!
the Garaggio 