Rubin

Hay fever is under control today - just one sneeze so far!

I only managed a couple of small tasks yesterday. I added aileron servo trays to the wing and glued and sanded to lower front decking to match the top of the fuselage.

Today it was time to make a cowl. I've never done this before so bear with me. Three blocks of Styrofoam are glued together and then cut to rough shape using a hot wire. A couple of hours of sanding and it looks like a cowl.

The next step is to cover the cowl in packing tape and glass it. I'll probably then use the 'lost foam' technique, but might use the cowl as a plug for a mould. Here's the model at this stage looking a lot more like a Rubin.

Good progress Mike. If you make the cowl using the styrofoam then in theory it should slip over the front of the fuselage?

I added a half inch block of blue foam the the rear of the canopy. This will allow me to 1) cut back to a clean line and 2) give me some extra cowl to slide over the fuselage instead of butt jointing. I then filled imperfections in the green foam and sanded to shape. The cowl is then covered in packing tape before glassing it. The whole lot goes in the vacuum bag with some peel ply to soak up excess resin as well as giving a rough surface so that filler and paint will stick better. Waiting for the resin to cure now before I can tell if it's worked.

MikeSeale wrote: The whole lot goes in the vacuum bag with some peel ply to soak up excess resin as well as giving a rough surface so that filler and paint will stick better.

May I ask please what is "peel ply"? Also what is stopping the vac bag from sticking to the gel coat? And where did you get the vac bag from - got another use for it?