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?

For clarity, you use the phrase gel coat but I am not using a gel coat, just laminating epoxy resin.

Peel ply is teflon coated polyester fabric. You add it to the wet epoxy and it soaks up any excess resin. Once cured you 'peel' off the peel ply leaving a matt surface to the epoxy that also has a fabric texture. This will take a filler/primer layer much better than a glossy epoxy.

The bag is nylon (I think) and will not stick to the resin - it should peel off easily...I hope!

I got my vacuum bag from easy composites

www.easycomposites.co.uk/#!/vacuum-equip...um-bagging-film.html

If you don't want or need a 1.5m wide bag you can get narrower from east coast composites

www.ecfibreglasssupplies.co.uk/product/5...film-06-mt-wide-tube

Great progress Mike. Jealous of the build skills!

watching the cowl build with interest - My big red Stearman needs one 10 1/4" dian (sorry 260mm )

kevinross wrote: watching the cowl build with interest - My big red Stearman needs one 10 1/4" dian (sorry 260mm )

I hope you have as much fun building it as I did!