Cowls - Part 4

Thus blog covers the gluing of the cheek cowls into a single assembly.

Overview
Time to make the lower cowl one piece.

Installation
The first task was to assemble the two lower halves with these installed on the fuselage using clecos fitted to the aluminium mounting angles. 

Next lengths of 25 x 12 aluminium channel were clecoed to the underside of the cowl to hold the two [2] pieces flat and in alignment for gluing.

Brackets to align the halves for gluing

Front alignment jig

Ready for gluing

With the jigs prepared the cowl was removed and the factory joints coated with epoxy and milled glass mixture and then reassembled with all the jigs and finally set aside to dry.

In the setup cutting the gear openings to the factory marks created a large error at assembly so it was decided to repair the error with a 1.0 mm carbon fibre panel. The panel was cut, drilled for cleco's and more aluminium jigs used to hold it flat and in alignment.

Glued 

Carbon fibre insert
This stuff eats hard edged tools in short order

With all this done the belly was now coated with a mixture of epoxy and micro balloons as a dry macro. After drying it was sanded with the orbital sander starting with 80 grit and finishing with 120 grit.

First sanding

Marking flange for dressing to final profile

End game

Comment
Next blog covers the installation of the fasteners.