Time: 4 Hours
So the Fairing was cured for 3 days since I had to fly for work. I peeled the ply off and reveled a fairly smooth surface and was happy. Ok let see if we can get this thing open…nope! I worked for 3 hours pulling and prying with no luck. I ended up using a carefully placed ratchet strap and a very thin plastic ruler sharpened on one end to cut the packing tape that was adhering to the windscreen. Finally with a slow motion it finally broke free with no damage.
Wow am I happy! Ok so I needs to cut this down to the appropriate size. I removed the orange tape and packing tape and put down a new layer of painters tape. One at the aft edge of the canopy frame bar and one centered around 3″ from the bar. I then measured aft from the bar tape 3″ and made a mark.
No I could close the canopy and use that 3″ mark to measure forward and place a mark on a piece of tape I put on the new fairing.
Now I had a very accurate line in which to cut the new faring. I opened The canopy and lined the interior with plastic to protect from dust and used my Dremel cut off tool to cut the faring.
I left the cut about an 1/8″ long as I plan on adding two more layers, one E glass and one carbon, to the fairing to give it a little more structure. I sanded it all down so that I could start the work from the transition of the vertical piece to the horizontal piece.
I really happy with the fit and shape so far. Still a ton of work to go to get this perfect but I’m on track. To strengthen the joint between the vertical and horizontal pieces I added a T-shaped layup.
More work to come!