On Monday, I got to the point in contour sanding and surfacing on the cowl where I was struggling to find flaws that needed to be fixed. Don’t get me wrong, there were still minor flaws, but most of them small enough that I would be liable to go backwards instead of making improvements if I added filler. With the cowl all in black primer and polished to 800 grit, it looks pretty darn good.
Next up is preparing to make the mold. To my fortune, and her chagrin, one of our Reno ‘September Family’, Jodi, got her flight cancelled in Phoenix. That means she got to spend some time in the Garaggio, and I got a workshop helper.
This mold making prep is the same as what we did for the first version of the cowl mold. Though this time a touch easier. We made poster board templates of the tooling flanges and cut them out of backer board. The backer board was jigged to the airplane using bondo blobs on the back side. Then the gaps were filled with clay and a nice radius formed in the corners to facilitate the glass flowing from cowl surface to tooling flange. Pretty simple, though takes a little time to get a nice fit on the tooling flanges and nice radius with the clay. Was nice having Jodi to help where more than 2 hands was nice, and to get the filleting done quickly. Thanks Jodi.
the Garaggio 
that is really looking nice.
Thanks Dave!