Cowling Drudgery

Been awhile since my last post. Been busy with work related stuff. I've been working on the cowling some but haven't had much to show for it. I've gotten the piano hinges cut and mounted on the fuselage with the stainless-steel pins I fabricated. Now I'm deep in the drudge work of trimming, sanding and fitting the upper and lower cowling halves to each other. There are scribe marks on the fiberglass that you're supposed to trim too but these marks aren't always clearly delineated in places. So, when removing material, you have to proceed with caution not to remove too much. It's a slow and tedious process and also messy. Fiberglass makes lots of dust. I cut off the gross excess with a rotary took and cutting disc. Then I used my pneumatic palm sander and 40 grit paper to further refine the edges. The final edging is done with a 12" sanding block to get a nice straight edge along the length. Craig came by today with the clear Lexan tooling we conceived and he designed in CAD to use in place of the prop and spinner. When the fixture is bolted to the crankshaft the upper cowling can be clecoed directly to it. This will provide a reliable and repeatable fixed reference for cowling fitment and also establish the 3/16" spinner-cowling gap.