Reinforced Lower Side of Right Wingtip and Filled Right Side of Rudder

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I decided to reinforce the wingtips by glassing in some foam rod.  I mixed up some epoxy/microlight/flox and bonded the rod to the inside of the wingtip and formed a fillet along both sides.  Afterward, I layed up a couple of layers of glass over each rod and then reinstalled the wingtip to put the right curvature in the skin.

I sanded down the filler on the left side of the rudder and then applied some filler to the right side.  I also removed the foam from the fiberglass tip at the top of the vertical stabilizer.  I need to reshape the tip a bit to fair it in with the rudder.

Removed Wingtip Reinforcement and Filled Left Side of Rudder

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Well, my attempt at reinforcing the bottom of the wingtip was a failure.  The Coremat didn’t come with instructions, and apparently, it needs to be saturated with epoxy in order to work.  I managed to pop the glass off and the Coremat released pretty easily from the inside surface of the wingtip.  I tried saturating the Coremat and reinstalling it, but it took a shocking amount of epoxy.  It would have easily weighed a couple of pounds, and I would need to do the same thing on the top and both surfaces of the other wingtip.  This would be far too much weight to add to the plane just to stiffen up the wingtips.

Before calling it quits for the evening, I decided to apply some filler to the left side of the rudder.  I mixed up the epoxy/microlight a little bit thinner tonight, so it should self-level somewhat which will make it easier to sand.

Glassed Leading Edges of Elevator Horns and Horizontal Stabilizer

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I had hoped not to do this, but I removed the horizontal stabilizer to make glassing the tips easier.

I had previously put a layer of glass over this joint way back when I first built the horizontal stabilizer, but I didn’t know that I needed to rough both surfaces up then, so I had to remove the old glass, rough up the surfaces with 80 grit sandpaper and re-glass them.

I also glassed over the leading edges of the elevator counterweight horns.  You can also see here how I clamped my horizontal stabilizer to the bench.  I screwed a small piece of plywood to the bench and then clamped the forward spar to it.  I can hang the elevators from the horizontal stabilizer this way and fair the tips together so that they’re perfectly aligned.

Glassed Elevators and Rudders

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I sanded and applied a layer of glass to one side of each of the elevators.  I also filed down the filler I applied yesterday, but I didn’t get a picture.

The rudder had the same issue, so I applied a little filler here.

The leading edge of the lower rudder fairing had also cracked, but only the outer layer.  I laid up a bit of glass over the crack to prevent it from growing.

Work on Right Elevator

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I only had a few minutes tonight, but I needed to take care of a bit of filler on the right elevator before laying up the glass over the joint.  The trailing edge of the tip fairing didn’t go all the way back to the trailing edge of the elevator skin, so I mixed up some epoxy/flox and filled in the gap.

On the leading edge, the countersink weight didn’t align with the leading edge skin, so I applied some of the filler here to build it out.  I’ll file this flush when it cures.