With the seatback out of the way (just needing a few touch ups) and our technique approved by our local guru LLoyd it was time to move onto F22. F22 is the light green bulkhead at the front of the aircraft shown in the picture below. It actually is built with little ears on the top of each side. These will end up helping to hold the longerons in place during the build in a later chapter. Once set up the ears get whacked off! You'll see the ears during the build below.
This bulkhead was going to be the standard size so it's just a matter of easily tracing out the figure on the plans. Once that is done then it's on to the foam. Here Jan is taking my tracing of the doubler and using a sewing tracing wheel to transfer the lines from the pattern onto the foam.
The curve will need to be done without the use of the ruler. Actually, when I tried this technique I found that the ruler made me a little too confident. Eventually, the tracing wheel would perform an beautiful unplanned/unwanted curve across the pattern and foam. If I did it without the ruler I was slower and didn't have that problem. Jan of course worked without those problems.
We drew over or colored over the traced line with a sharpie. This was to make the puncture marks on the foam easier to see.
Here you can see some of the puncture marks in the tracing paper in the curve before it's colored over by the sharpie.
This is what the marks on the foam look like after coloring in the trace with the sharpie.
Now Jan connects the dots to make the lines easier to see for cutting. She's using a pencil to connect the dots!
Here's the result of the tracings.
The plans page that actually shows the foam cutouts (Chapter 2, Page 5 of the second edition of the plans) shows the F-22 doubler upside down from the way we cut it. We figured why not use the long edge of the foam as the long edge of the doubler? Less cutting! Also even if the foam edge isn't square with the edge I can position the tracing so that the cut edges are square when done.
Time to move on to tracing out the rest of F22. Hey wait a minute...what's with that Van's Aircraft RV9A t-shirt??? Left over from teh old project no doubt! It must be time to start looking for a Cozy t-shirt. Of course I'm not sure we'd want to get them messed up with building. Maybe it's not a bad idea to use the RV9 shirt for building the Cozy...hmmm...
Ok, I can do something besides take pictures! It helps to press hard when you're running the tracing wheel. This will allow you to see the holes from the tracing wheel in the foam.
Here Jan is back to penciling in the tracing line.
We skip ahead to putting together the cut out pieces of foam that will make the F22 bulkhead. Here we've laid the cutouts on the tracing paper to make sure we end up with a properly sized F22 bulkhead. Jan is marking a spare piece of foam for the middle pieces that tie the top and bottom of F22 together. This is done simple because the foam sheets that came in the kit aren't big enough to make the bulkhead out of one or two peices of foam.
We're using the Wayne Hick's hinge method of putting the foam pieces together. This requires that you put a piece of Duck tape fully across the back of the split between the two pieces. When you lift up the pice of foam, the two pieces are hinged together with the tape to open like a book.
Then lay two pieces of Duck tape one on each piece of foam along the edge line on the other side. Notice the ears on each pices of tape to allow you to easily pull the tape off of the foam when done.
Darn another spot where I could use another picture. Oh well, check out the link to Wayne's page above. You prop up the pieces of foam so that they form a teepee exposing the two edges. Lay a small line of 5 minute epoxy (man this stuff will smell up your work area quick - worse than a Texan eating beans and boiled eggs at a beer party). Lay the foam back down and wipe any excess off that creeps out between the two peices of tape. Then remove the two pieces of tape (leaving the back piece on).
Wait 5 minutes (hence the name Smelly 5 minute epoxy). They should be epoxied together!
Now remove the tape off of the back for the foam. Notice now that the two larger pieces of foam and the three smaller pieces are together.
Here's the whole part waiting the last 5 minutes.
We aligned the doubler up on the bulkhead and then drew on the doubler the places we needed to sand down. This will allow us to match up the two surfaces and have one smooth surface with the two pieces.
on to Part 2b!