Ok, I’m finally done sanding on the cowl for now. I did a solid 9hr day today to get it knocked out with final sanding and priming. It isn’t anywhere near final, but is almost exactly as good as I was shooting for just for phase one, pre-paint. Almost all of the pin holes are filled. It will need one more round of sanding primer before paint. Major accomplishment.
Still priming and sanding the cowl…
Yep, I decided to dive into priming and sanding the cowl. The surface is pretty sloppy with pin holes and imperfections that have to be filled in an iterative process. I’m using UV Smooth Prime from ACS. The first coat I rolled on with a foam roller. That worked pretty well. I think I’m going to spray the next coat. I’m just aiming for close enough with this since it is a very unpleasant process. I’ll pay somebody to take it “the last mile” when it goes to paint.
The frustration of sanding for hours at a time deserved a nice flight so Tanya and I launched in a DA-40 for some pattern practice. What could be more relaxing.
I got all of the camloc cowl fasteners drilled and riveted to the attach strips. Next is to simply rivet the side attach strips to the firewall flange and we can call that done. I also picked up some epoxy pigment to use in some thinned epoxy to seal the inside surface of the cowl. The pigment was kind of useless as it wasn’t very opaque. I brushed on the thinned epoxy on the inside surface and am going to go back and paint it white with some high temp engine enamel.
I started the installation of the Milspec camlocs on the cowl.
