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Door Edge Lip: Square or 45-degree bevel?

mikeyj350

Well Known Member
I hope I'm not starting a never-ending debate... :eek:

Just getting started on the doors and I had a question I thought I'd pose here: Once you glue the door halves together and trim them to size, they need to be trimmed to fit in the opening of the cabin top. The plans have you bevel the lip of the door at a 45-degree angle, and sand the edges of the cabin top so that the edge on the door matches the edge on the cabin. Some folks seem to have finished their doors differently, trimming the door edge square and building up the edge of the cabin to also be [more] square.

Which is better and what should we do???!? :D Or, probably better way to ask, pros/cons of each method? Anyone who did it one way and wishes they did it the other, and why?

If it matters, I'm planning on doing the McMaster seal (1120A311) on the cabin opening.

Thanks as always... Cheers!!
 
The 45* will self center as it closes, just in case the door is slightly misaligned.
 
Mike,

I think you are talking about multiple issues here.

You may have to build up the cabin cover to match the contour of the doors. There are a variety of causes for this that I won't go into here. The most common is a very typical flat spot on the cover between the door frame and rear window.

Your painter is going to want probably a 1/8" gap between the door and cabin cover to ensure that you don't get contact and cause the paint to chip.

You are probably going to get a variety of opinions here too, but what I did was to round all my corners instead of a bevel. My thoughts are that round corners are less likely to chip the paint than anything with a sharp corner.

You are also going to have to build the door lip up if you are going to use the McMaster Carr seals. I recommend using the 1/4" version. Use small strips of glass to build everything up. Keep the amount of filler to a minimum and you'll get good results.

bob
 
As Bob says - build up the door or frame to make the fit flush, sand edges round and leave a 1/8" or so gap. Let the door seal do it's job, not try to seal with the door edge.

One trick I learned was the last step in this process was to close the door and put a skim coat of mico over the door to door frame space. Let the mico set up a little then take a razor blade and cut a fine line in the mico along the gap. Let it all set up and then sand. You end up with a perfect door to door frame gap.

Carl
 
Mike/Bob/Carl- Thanks for the replies! I wondered about the possibility of contact between the door and frame, and also the idea of doing the 45* bevel, meaning there's a sharp 135* corner at the outboard face of the door. The 1/8" gap idea makes sense to me, and I'll try that micro trick!

I think I'll be bonding both doors together by the end of the day today (had hoped for yesterday, but you know how that goes ;))... so hopefully within the next day or two we'll start making those cuts. Thanks again guys!
 
Beware!

Make SURE you mix up more epoxy than you will need, once you start applying it is no time to realize you need to mix more...:eek:
 
Make SURE you mix up more epoxy than you will need, once you start applying it is no time to realize you need to mix more...:eek:
Caution..........better to have help to mix more as you need it. Mix too much and you can run out of pot life or worse, have the reaction go uncontrolled and self combust. Depends on your work space temps, whether you have fast or slow catalyst , etc. Just don't blindly mix up a bunch. Door bonding is a task where help is very useful.
 
epoxy

I am using the West system and have had good luck mixing up to 6 - 8 ounces at a time with no runaways...shop temp 70..slow hardener.

That being said, help is a great thing as trying to mix more epoxy and cabo takes time which is eating in to the pot life of the first mix...and once you start applying it to the door surfaces, you are committed.
 
I am about to start the door trimming, so I have some questions on this old thread...

Does the 1/8" clearance apply to both the perimeter of door as well as the cabin cover behind the door?

i.e. when door is flush with outside, there is no contact with cabin cover except where the inboard part of door bottoms out on the gutter lip of cabin cover.

For those that have rounded off the inside edge of door instead of bevel, what was done with the cabin cover behind the door?

Was the door edge just slightly radius to knock off the sharp edge or aggressively rounded off to clear the underlying cabin cover?

This is for the standard VANs door seals.

Thanks!
 
I did a 45 degree angle, and then did a nice roundover on the sharp 135 degree edge of the door to make it paint friendly.
 
Rounding sharp edges is a good idea. I placed my McMaster seals on the door itself as the directions indicate. I made sure the inner lip on the cabin frame was 1/8 inch wide and with the door closed that lip was within 1/8 inch of the closed door. Then the seal placed on the door lay between that inner cabin lip and the outer cabin wall. With the seal on the door, I never grabbed the seal getting into the plane or never bumped it with my feet stepping over the door threshold. Seal still robust after 130 hours and no wind or rain leaks.
 
Rounding sharp edges is a good idea. I placed my McMaster seals on the door itself as the directions indicate. I made sure the inner lip on the cabin frame was 1/8 inch wide and with the door closed that lip was within 1/8 inch of the closed door. Then the seal placed on the door lay between that inner cabin lip and the outer cabin wall. With the seal on the door, I never grabbed the seal getting into the plane or never bumped it with my feet stepping over the door threshold. Seal still robust after 130 hours and no wind or rain leaks.

That makes sense. Just to be clear, with the door closed does the outer edge come in contact with the cabin cover at all?

Plans show no gap at the door outer edge/cabin top interface and 0 to 1/16" gap at the inner lip. It sounds like it is best to have 1/8" gap at both places so the only contact is at the seal and pins. This will probably make more sense when I start trimming, just trying to visualize it.

Thanks again.
 
Local build

Dropped you a PM. Thought you might be interested in looking at a local build.
 
Does the outer edge come in contact with the cabin top?
The outer edge of my doors are shy of the adjacent cabin top by two credit card thicknesses before painting. That still left room for the door to shift in flight and not rub against the painted cabin top. Also the inner lip of the cabin top around the door comes to within 1/8" of the closed cabin door. In no areas did I want door rubbing on cabin top during flight.
 
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