Well, this work is finally completed on the two floats.
Here is a look at one of the forward beam bulkheads.
Here are a few of my observations
- I started out by wetting out three layers cloth tape at a time (remember I had to apply 6 layers at 4 inch width and 6 at 6 inch width using my 9oz aircraft cloth) making the job tolerable in duration. By the end I was wetting out and applying all 6 layers at the same time.
- At a few of the locations I simply hot glued the mold plate to the bulkhead. On the forward bulkheads this was working fine. There was room to get in there and pry it out, breaking the hot glue seal. However on the rear bulkhead the lack of space and the width of the mold plate I chose to use, made removing the mold plate extremely difficult. I ended up using the clamping approach shown in my last entry on the rear bulkhead locations.
There is still some clean up to be done under here, but it will wait until I turn the floats over and I am moving on to shaping the float keels. I want to see how little filler I can get away with on the keel area. I know that I made some poor foam strip joins to the keel strip in a number of places.
2 comments:
It would appear to me that perhaps these parts could be attached to the bulkheads before they go in the hull. Any bonding to the deck plate could be done by applying resin/epoxy goop on to them and then lower the deck plate on and screw through the deck to suck them up… when cured remove the screws. Mind you I do not have the plans sitting in front of me and will have to ponder it some more. What do you think?
Tom
Interesting idea Tom, but I think you will find that the bulkheads are not height guaranteed. On my build there is a gap ~ 5mm between the bulkhead top and the deck level. When cured this flange is a 'rock hard Betsy' -These flanges on the beam bulkheads will not suck up.
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