Greg and I

I had a very welcome appearance from Greg today. He has been busy with trips and such that has kept him from the Garaggio when I have been around, and I have been working when he has been around. It was nice to have someone in the shop today, not only for the increased productivity, but also to socialize.

I was working on sanding the fuselage and strakes when he got here. The good news is the fuselage and strakes are nearly done. There is about 10 square feet of places that need some touch up to cover up some places where underlying structure is printing through the primer. This will just be spot primed and sanded. One or two more sessions of that, and the fuselage will be considered done.

While I was working on that, Greg started by masking off the canopy and sanding the first coat of primer. There are some areas that will need some spot putty and then we can put the next coat of primer on.

Greg also got the doors/hatches from the nose of the airplane sanded out. They are sanded out well, and are done. They don’t require any further primer.

I also got some sanding done on the top cowl. It is looking pretty good, though I may need to do one more complete coat. I haven’t decided yet. There is about 30-40% of the area I could leave alone, and probably will. It depends on how the rest of the cowl sands.

Towards the end of the day, we wanted to get a few things done other than sanding. So we riveted the hinges to the rudders. We still need to add nut plates to the other leaf of the hinge, so they are just clecoed in place. I am somewhat disappointed in the fit of the rudders to the winglets. One of them looks good, but the other, the seams are not even, and are larger than I thought they would be. Don’t get me wrong, they are certainly airworthy and can be re-worked to make them look even better. It was just disappointing to see that after I spent a lot of effort to try to make them better than this. Good news is they swing really nice, and after some minor sanding don’t bind anywhere.

Lastly, we worked on getting the nut plates on the forward lip of the top cowl. This involved mounting nut plates and countersinking the top of the mating surfaces. We only got half of the nut plates mounted because I ran out of time for the day. But we certainly made lots of progress today. Thanks Greg for all the help, it was motivating!