| day |
notes |
hours |
| 5 |
Calculate new position for resin pump hardener piston. Continue clearing up & fitting storage shelves etc in garage. |
|
| 7 |
Jiffy bag arrives from Europa Aircraft with Mod 58, TP16 tailplane tab drive pin replacement. |
|
| 15 |
Sweep garage floor and haul out old bedroom carpet from trailer. Cut a piece 4.2m x 2.7m and start to lay it in the insulated area, with layup table pulled out of the way at the back beside trestle table. |
|
| 17 |
Finish laying carpet, replacing the stuff stored against the east wall. Hang curtain at back of insulated area as at front. Temperature comes up to 25C in the working area quite quickly. The fan-heater thermostats need to be set to about 4.5 to achieve this. Adjust resin pump hardener piston position to that predicted for a volume ratio of 29.1:100 (weight ratio 25.09:100). Find this needs at least 3 hands because the pump lever needs to be held horizontal while positioning and tightening everything. Might be useful to replace the loose nuts on the cylinder clamp bolts with a single piece of metal with 2 tapped holes, which would eliminate the need for a spanner at the back. Do two 8-stroke calibration runs. Still a bit of stroke-to-stroke variation, but mostly within tolerance band, and mean weight ratio is around 25.3:100, which is well within the tolerance band (24.26:100 - 25.76:100). Would be nice to get it just a little nearer, so calculate a new distance for the hardener piston. |
|
| 21 |
Part-way through preparing to adjust the pump ratio again, I realize the ideal solution to the loose bolt problem is a couple of carriage bolts. I don't have any of the right length (M6x65mm) in stock, but a quick trip to B&Q fixes that. Another calibration run after adjustment shows little change from the previous setting. The link clamp can swivel slightly on the arm when unclamped, and is not quite parallel to the pivot block. |
|
| 22 |
Re-calculate hardener pump link position & adjust it again. A calibration run gives perfect accuracy to 3 decimal places over 8 strokes. I think that will do! Wax an old mirror to do the test layup on. Cut off 6 pieces of BID. They weigh about 40-50 gm each (including masking tape one end). No attempt to be clever & cut on bias, just straight. Layup the six layers, using 3 strokes (about 54gm) of resin mix per layer, except for the last one which only needs 2 strokes. Appearance seems good & like what I remember from doing the chock. There were many bubbles in the mixing cups after stirring, and quite a few under each glass cloth layer until it got squeeged. |
|
| 23 |
Bandsaw the test piece to 10"x16" and it weighs 332gm - rather heavy. The bottom surface (next to the glass) does seem to be quite resin-rich with several patches where the glass texture is not visible when looking at the reflecting surface. Cover the front of the glass-cloth cupboard with polyethylene sheet for protection. Make up some sanding sealer with half an old tin of gloss polyurethane varnish and some talcum powder and coat the inside face of the flap with it. |
|
| 24 |
With the belt sander & 120 grit belt, sand off the first coat of sanding sealer on the glass-cloth cupboard flap. Feels much better than before. Apply the remainder of the tin as the second coat. |
|
go to list of milestones
go to previous page of journal 
go to list of narrative pages
