Tonight was basically a repeat of Sunday, but with the upper cowl this time. The only real change was that I made sure to check every single countersink to make sure I wasn’t going to have a bunch of proud rivets that needed sanding down like the upper cowl. After that, I went through the same routine of sanding mating surfaces and drilling 3/16” holes in the aft hinges to allow for some flox bleed through and hopefully extra adhesion.
I did take a different picture this time, just to show how I mask around the hinges to make it easier to clean up the epoxy squeeze-out. I’m trying to keep the inside of the cowl halfway decent looking, after all:
One other thing I decided to do tonight was to assemble the cowl halves before finishing the work session. I noticed that the lower cowl got a lot stiffer where the hinges were bonded – not too surprising, I don’t think, given the extra material and tight bond – and I thought it was worth making an effort to have the upper cowl cure in assembly, to help both halves line up nicely going forward. Of course, I was really careful to clean up any epoxy squeeze-out here, lest I accidentally bond the cowl halves together.
It never seems to get old seeing an assembled part without clecos for the first time:
Now I’m really anxious to fit these halves back to the fuselage and see how everything looks together…then I guess it’ll be on to the fun of starting to work on cleaning up gaps. Or maybe I’ll leave that alone for a bit and work on the pin covers instead. Or maybe I should clean up that micro on the front corners first. Ah, decisions…