Wrap Up Work 4
10/15/2006 8 hours
Piero called me early this morning, and we both went down to the hangar to start upholstering the glareshield. He found some foam that will be perfect for the task too. It's cloth backed, and about 1/4" thick. This stuff looks perfect!
The line on the skin is where our windshield stops. This will be the guide for where we need the trim. We made a pattern out of some plastic....
Then transfered the pattern to the foam. Here's Piero working his magic. He's Italian, so he know's that I want our plane to be beautiful!
Once we had the foam cut, we laid it on the glareshield and then marked around the edge. This will give us the exact trim line we need.
Here, we have one cut, and we're making another piece as a pattern. We will likely start to sell these as some sort of DIY kit. If you're interested send me an e-mail.
The next step was to mask off EVERYTHING! When you're using spray glue, you don't want it to go everywhere. Here, Piero is masking off the defroster vent.
Here you can see how I masked off the panel. This masking will be needed later when we apply the fabric.
More masking... We don't want glue to go where we don't want it. Piero's spray gun shoots a pretty good tight pattern, so it shouldn't really be too bad for us. If you were to use 3M Super 77 out of an aerosol, it might be a different story.
Piero is applying the glue to the back of the foam. He's using the cardboard to avoid spraying other things, like my feet!
Another shot of the same thing...
Now we spray glue to the actual plane. This is a contact cement, so you let it dry a tad before touching the surfaces together. The trouble is, when they do touch, that's it! There are no second chances!
The next thing we did was to thread the foam over the centre brace and push it down all the way without letting the foam touch the glareshield. Not so easy. That's why there's no photo of this, because it took both of us to do it!
Once the foam was on, the next part involved trimming the foam down so it overhung the glareshield aluminium by about 1/4". This gives enough to fold over and then push on the edge trim. In hindsight, if we did it again, we'd probably leave it even longer, then trim off the excess with a sharp knife around the inside.
Because we cut it before applying, we ended up using masking tape to keep the foam in place. Like I say, we probably should've left it longer and then trimmed it. This edging will give the sharp forehead cutting edge of the glareshield a nice sized radius.
For some, this may be adequate enough of a glareshield trim job. It actually looks quite nice, even without the fabric. We may do two options for a DIY kit. We'll see. I should take a good picture of the glareshield as it stands before we put the fabric over it.
In this picture, you can see the foam that we made as a pattern being used to trim the fabric to size. We made two pieces like this for Piero to take away and stitch together. You'll see how this will work later in the week when we finish this little project off. It's going to look really, really good. I can't wait! My fabric choice was black Ultrasuede. This stuff sure is expensive! The beauty of it though is that it won't reflect into the windshield at all, it won't fade, and looks great.
I took Piero back to Dearborn, and went to eat. Then I came back to the hangar and did a little bit more. Not really much though! I removed the top cowling and drilled the holes out for the camloc fasteners with a unibit. Here's one fitted.
Then I put the cowling back on the plane and called it a day. I want to train the baffle seals to stay folded over!
10/22/2006 6 hours
Today, we got to finish up the glareshield trim. I'd spoken with Piero the day before and I picked him up at 8:45 this morning. We got to the hangar, warmed the place up with the torpedo heater (it's getting cold quickly now), and set about it. It took us a lot longer than we thought it would though!
In the photo below, we've laid down the closest half of the fabric. It was tough to take pictures through every stage here as we really had our hands full. We started by putting some adhesive on the edge of the glareshield, and on the corresponding part of the fabric, then Piero helped me align the seam with the edge and we stuck it into place. This part was REALLY hard to do. Getting the seam to run straight was very tricky indeed, and it does have a tiny wobble in here and there, but you wouldn't really notice unless you were looking for it. Maybe the judges at Oshkosh? We managed to tuck the fabric under the centre brace very nicely too.
Here's a detail shot of the defroster vent. This vent worked out nicely as it's spaced slightly away from the aluminium. This gives you somewhere to tuck fabric in and glue it. This part also took some perseverance, but it came out so sweet.
This shot shows how we worked our way along the fabric to stick it down. Most of the glue was put around the edges of the fabric, so the majority of the area is actually not glued. This makes the fabric look really nice and hides any imperfections we may have had in the foam layer (not many!).
Who's this goofball? I look like a kid opening a present at Christmas! We'd got the outside done, and it was gorgeous. Now for the inside part. Piero was worried about getting creases in here, but it also worked a treat. I'm spraying on the adhesive here. You can see it on the fabric as a white colour spray.
Piero applying some finishing touches, making the nap of the fabric all go the same way. Once we'd trimed the inside edges and the ends, we put the roll bar back in place. Does this look sweet or what?
Here's another shot of the panel with it's nice new glareshield.
Spot the difference. We spent a little time making a hairdryer holder out of some aluminium tubing for Piero's hairdresser, then I dropped him back at home, and came back to get the roll bar stuff together. Clayton came by with Joe and his wife Carol. They're some of the 'old' Subaru crowd, and were visiting from Pennsylvania. They helped me get the complass light bulbs soldered back on to the wires and assembled back into the compass. Thanks for catching the soldering iron Joe! Carol was learning to do sheetmetal, and seemed to be having fun doing it too!
So, here is the compass back in place. I didn't get time to bolt the roll bar down, because I had to get home to do some painting. Ugh.
Now that the glareshield is in place, and the roll bar is nearly in, I can concentrate on getting the windshield on. I need a relatively warm day for this so I can work with the plexi without risking cracking it. I can put the heater on for a bit to bring the temps up though if I have to.
I must say that I'm really, really pleased with the way this has turned out. Piero was quite impressed too, and he's the pro! I must take the time to say thanks to Piero as this would never have looked this good without his help and expertise. I have added an entry for him on my links page, so if you are in the area and need some upholstery doing (he specialises in fine and antique furniture) I would highly recommend him. Thank you again Piero.
I took the day off work today coz it was a bit warmer (50F) so I could heat up the hangar easily to cut the windshield. I need to get this thing ready to put on ASAP. Little did I realise how long it would take to get as far as I did. On the way there I went to Home Depot and bought an outdoor thermometer to keep a check on the temperature. I managed to keep the hanger between 80 and 90 degrees quite easily. When visitors came by, they were shocked at how hot I had it in there!
I spoke with Art at the FAA yesterday, and we set the date for our inspection. It will be on the afternoon of November 21st. That's just before thanksgiving. Hopefully, it'll be ready by then!
Well the task at hand was the windshield. Namely, getting it ready to be fitted. This took what seemed an eternity. I had rough trimmed it a long, long time ago when making the canopy, so I didn't have to do too much trimming which was nice. Here, I laid it on to work out what needed to be done.
The first task was to hack away at the glareshield fabric we spent so long getting perfect. The covering needed to be trimmed to the edge of the windshield. Towards the rear, it needed to be removed to allow the plexi to be closer to the roll over bar so it fits nicely to the canopy glass. Here, I'm just beginning to trim it.
Eventually, it looked like this. In between trimming the fabric, I was also trimming the winshield plexi! Don't worry about the glareshield fabric, all the edges will be sealed up with epoxy when the windshield goes on.
Another shot of the trimmed glareshield fabric.
After all that, here's the final shaped windshield sitting on the plane. I spent a long time sanding the rear edge to match the canopy plexi too. I also cleaned up all the other edges to prevent any cracking.
Now I will enlighten you as to my little plan.... I would really like to have a really clean look over the top of our canopy between the windshield and the sliding part. To this end, I have been perfecting the fit between the two by making all these little shims. It's quite a painstaking process really, because I have to make a shim, close the canopy, check the flushness to the windshield, if it's good, then move on, if it's not, then make another shim. Well, there were 29 of them! I matched the pitch of the canopy frame rivets. Am I obsessive compulsive? Maybe! I was about 80% done, and Larry came by to see if I wanted to go flying. Sounds good to me! We took an hour out to go punch some holes in the sky in his Beechcraft Sierra.
Moving on with the windshield to canopy matching.... Is this gap tight enough? I'm going to put a bulb seal between the canopy frame and the roll bar to seal this area. The windshield will have black painted inside to match the canopy too. It's gonna look so cool.
Aaargh! Finally it's all match drilled. The trouble is, you have to shim as you go, otherwise all your holes won't line up! What a pain it was, but well worth it if it works out as planned.
Now that's all done, I can take this thing off, countersink the holes, open the holes up to fianl size and paint the 'ceramic' line. I used a paint called 'Fusion' from Krylon for this. It works very well indeed, as it sort of soaks into the plexiglass. It's pretty tough too, and won't scratch off.
While the paint was drying, I tapped out the holes in the roll over bar. This was entertaining too. I got anout half way round and snapped my tap. Fortunately, I've got an abundant supply of them. The tricky part was getting the broken tap out of the hole! It came out eventually, with a bit of mild persuasion.
The windshield is now ready for the plane, and I think the plane is ready for the windshield. Hopefully, tomorrow evening I can stop by and put it on and lay up a bead of micro and some glass. I also need to make a few of the little clips that are needed to hold the bottom of the windshield in place. That shouldn't be too bad though. In the meantime, I need to go to bed, it's late! The paint will have hardened off some by tomorrow too.