Shaping the rudder tip again

The odyssey of the rudder tip continues! I’m starting to become amused by how much time I’m spending on this, though I figure future parts work should go much faster since I’ll know better what I’m doing.

Tonight I sanded the tip down yet again, after last night’s attempt at filling pinholes. Unfortunately, by the time I sanded it back to shape, I uncovered…more holes. It would seem that using micro to fill pinholes isn’t the best approach. So I went back and reviewed a bunch of threads on VAF and decided to take a different approach, namely using a few raw epoxy skim coats to fill the holes. This ought to work better since the epoxy will be a lot less viscous and more apt to fill holes rather than just bridging them.

So over the course of a few hours I applied three skim coats, allowing each one to tack up for about an hour before adding the following coat. Hopefully this will give me a nice hard shell that I can sand down (again) to a nice smooth finish and maybe then I can finally spray some high build primer and think about finishing these things up.

In the meantime, things are looking nice and smooth after the third and final coat:

Posted in Empennage, Fiberglass. Bookmark the permalink. Hours Logged: 1.5