Wing Bagging part 5

We left off last time with the wing in the vacumn bag overnight, I had a very good seal on this new bag and my vacumn pump (controlled by an electric switch coupled with a car advance vacumn switch)cycling about every 6 to 8 mins , after an hour I checked the vacumn/compressor set up and it was running ice cold.




Next morning everything looked ok except that I had misaligned the bottom skin at the root, but only some carbon cloth was short, when scratch building models "re-engineering " is often required , in this case I dont believe strength will be compromised so It will be filled as will all the hollows, waterpapered down and the whole wing given a final spray of 2k.



The second wing has gone into the vacumn bag and its time to clean up and trim wing number one. I always use a slight overlap and the mylars can move slightly , so first of its time to cut the trailing edge to shape where I have plenty of overlap.
I mark using a permanent marker and a straight edge the line to cut, then I mask this line with masking tape , the line shows through, this is important otherwise the cutting blade can slip and veer off damaging the surface, with a new sharp blade you cut with a series of cuts. This has a carbon skin which is really tough , I broke a sweat cutting this edge .


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The leading edge was carefully trimmed back to the rounded section that was formed during the core preparation.



The wing now looks great but has a few blemishes and a black leading edge , some sanding , filling and when both wings are ready , final paint. "IMPORTANT MESSAGE"
Sand the leading edge with a block and not your hand and sand paper trying to make a rounded shape, last time I did that the paper snagged the carbon tows , lifting a splinter that went right through the middle of my finger and resulted in a trip to hospital for removal, this wasted a whole evening of building time and some money.



So the next post is the finishing of of the tips and cutting the control surfaces
the servo wiring and servo placement. The fuselage is also well underway and if anyone is interested in how that is being built I will do a build sequence on that
No one has asked what the heck I am building (its a bit of a secret)its going to have its maiden flight at the upcomming Sungazer Slope event at Volksrust.
Cheers For Now
Mike