Brad's stiill going gangbusters on the wing plugs; he's about 75% done getting the plugs ready for a final coat of paint. No photos lately; one big shiny blob of gray primer pretty much looks like another.
Here's the latest photos of what's going on at my shop:
This shot is from a couple of weeks ago. It shows the piece I made to add the detail features for the elliptical opening in the top of the fin spar. Rather than trying to cut and rout these features into the top of the fiberglass and bondo squish plug, I just cut and routed them into a chunk of 1/2" MDF, and then glued that to the top of the squish.
And here I'm gluing the fin spar end rib onto the top of the plug.
At the bottom of the fin spar plug, here I'm casting the fuselage boom radius onto the bottom of the plug where it extend aft to form the bottom rudder hinge and rudder stop platforms. The yellow stuff on the fuselage mold is tooling wax of the expected fuselage skin thickness. The masking tape helps protect the mold surface from the bondo.
This view of the fin spar plug resting on the fuselage mold shows how the fin spar will fit into the vertical stabilizer.
Here I'm molding part of the plug for the upper rudder hinge. I was originally going to use a metal part here, but I came to realize that a bonded-in composite part would be stronger and lighter than a metal part attached with metal hardware.
The rough casting for the upper rudder hinge plug. I later sanded off most of the bondo and cleaned it up a bunch.
page updated 13 June 2005 all text and graphics copyright (c) 2005 HP Aircraft, LLC