Here’s the cured fiberglass over the foam rod. This worked great. It’s incredibly light (just a couple of ounces per rod at the most), and added a surprising amount of stiffness to the wingtip. The Coremat I was going to add would have made it stiffer for sure (probably close to the stiffness of the cowl), but that would have been overkill. The wingtips simply do not need to be that strong and the weight penalty was excessive.
I’ve been meaning to reshape the vertical stabilizer fairing for some time. I originally installed the foam rib based on the shape of the tip right out of the box, and not how it looked relative to the rudder horn. Unfortunately, it turned out fatter and shorter than the rudder horn, so I needed to reshape it. I removed the old foam rib and used a clamp to squeeze it (making it both narrower and taller). I then used a heat gun to soften the epoxy so that it would take the new shape. I wrapped the rib in some fiberglass which will stiffen everything up a lot. I’ll still need to add a bunch of filler to both the fairing and rudder horn and sand them at the same time to fair them together.
While that’s curing, I added some foam rod and glass to the upper side of the right wingtip and then reinstalled it on the plane to set the curvature.
