Here are the photos of the front fairing from the previous session in the shop. As I mentioned in the last post, I used a little bit of rage gold. Having gone from never working with rage gold or epoxy, to now nearly finishing this canopy and skirt – I’ll offer a few quick observations. As a general rule, I’m not a huge fan of body filler. The only thing it has going for it is the speed with which it dries and can be sanded. In all other aspects, strength, appearance, application, I prefer flox or micro balloons and epoxy depending on the application. My general technique would now be to use body filler as a last resort for areas of small discrepancies after using micro.

Tonight’s session in the shop focused on bonding prep. I further sanded the mating surfaces on the skirt, (directions call for 80 grit, which I’ve used previously, but tonight I used some 60 grit to really get a great adhesion surface) and completely cleaned all the edges of the canopy to remove stress risers / unseen cracks. All that stands between bonding the canopy and now is some additional tape / covering for the canopy, and sanding the canopy mating surfaces. I fully expect to bond the canopy this weekend. I’m excited to be nearing completion of the canopy and skirt.

Last night before I left I added micro balloon filler to the front fairing / flox fillets. Here is the micro after it dried. I used a bit too much, but thats ok – I wanted a nice gradual fillet to cover up the large amounts of flox.

I then proceed to sand and sand and sand. Luckily micro is easy to sand.

The end result came out pretty well. I actually did more sanding after the following two photos, and also added some body filler to top edge to even out the few inconsistencies there. I will post additional photos in my next shop session.

I’m very sick of sanding and fiberglass work. I’m ready for a new challenge. Sigh.

Here is the flox fairing after the second application. As you can see I was able to build it up a good distance from the previous session. The tape mold worked nicely.

The first step was to sand everything down and even. The left side has a slightly different geometry than the right, and doesn’t result in quite such a smooth line.

I also continued my taping and have both the interior and exterior taped. One more layer and then I will add plastic to both sides for protection. This should allow me to prime, bond, et al without risk.