In the Long-EZ and related aircraft, the fuel tanks are integral to the structure. The strakes on each side of the fuselage are hollow and contain the fuel. They are made of the same glass/foam sandwich as the rest of the structure, which is fine because the epoxy is impervious to gasoline. … to pure …
After the 6-ply flat and confidence layups, the third and final practice layup is the bookend. This is more complicated than the others and is designed to let you practice shaping urethane foam, making corners, and to show you how the fiberglass conforms to complicated shapes. So the idea is to make a book end out …
Since making the two practice layups (first here and second here), I asked around what the ideal cloth/resin ratio should be, and the consensus seems to be that a reasonable amount of resin to get to with an open layup without letting air in is about a 60:40 weight ratio of cloth and resin. Vacuum …
I made one more “confidence layup”. This one I did according to the instructions. When I made the first one, I had misread the instructions and used polyvinyl foam instead of polyurethane. The PV foam is a lot stronger and is used in structural applications on the airplane, so this should have made the piece …
When I bought my supplies from Aircraft Spruce with the 20% discount from the workshop, I threw in a yard each of carbon fiber BID and UNI just to try working with it. I made another “confidence layup”, this time out of carbon fiber. Since i had obvious air gaps at the inside corner when …
Progress has been a bit slow lately, but what I did get done since the holidays are some workshop improvements: It’s been more of a “woodworking” than “composite construction” thing, but I now have 2 “EAA Chapter 1000” workbenches. These were designed by (you guessed it) EAA Chapter 1000, who realized that it was nice …
It’s been a while since I’ve posted on any progress. Partially because I came down with three back-to-back colds starting on Dec 24 (nice Christmas present…) and partially because I just haven’t shot any pictures. Over the holidays, I did make what the education chapter refers to as the “confidence layup”, which is a 16-inch …
After working on insulating the shed and building the hotbox, I got back to the practice layups over the holidays. If you read the first layup post, you know the first try of the 6-ply 10×16″ practice layup was too dry with many white parts. I was hoping that a warm workshop and properly heated …
An exercise that almost everyone that starts working with fiberglass encounters right away is that of building a heated box for epoxy storage. The epoxy should be warm when used, somewhere around 30C or 90F, otherwise its viscosity is higher and it’s more difficult to wet out the fabric. If you don’t store it at …
After the SportAir workshop, I put in an order for a startup kit of composite materials from Aircraft Spruce. Since we got a discount from the workshop, I thought it would be a good way of getting some momentum on the airplane building. I didn’t order nearly enough for an airplane, but it’s sufficient for …