John R. Graham
Active Member
After what seems like way to long in the "preparing to build" phase, yesterday was day zero for my RV-7 build. I've completed just one thing: I believe I've satisfactorily completed the finishing of one of the two HS-609PP Rear Spar Reinforcing Bars. I rounded the ends pretty evenly with the Scotchbrite wheel but wasn't able to break the edges evenly with it, so I opted to use a file to break the edges and remove tooling marks. Using long overlapping strokes with the file resulted in pretty even work, but the subsequent sanding of the part seemed to take a long time. I started with 80 grit emery cloth and in several steps worked my way up to 400 grit wet or dry, the latter of which is per the plans, resulting in this (click to enlarge):
Furthermore, the inevitable roughness of the filed area sometimes hid that I hadn't removed all the tooling marks, so I iterated back and forth between the file and the emery cloth. Overall, the prep of one bar took me five hours. That leaves me with two questions.
First, am I working to hard? I'm thinking that I should've used one of the little drill-mounted Scotchbrite wheels that came with the Avery kit or else perhaps I should get one of those grinder-mounted flap sanding wheels. I'd appreciate some pointers.
Second, as the parts came from the factory, there were some less than trivial depth (but still pretty small) gouges on the bars that didn't easily sand out. Here's the best picture I was able to get with my macro lens (click to enlarge):
Should I be doing anything more to these?
Thanks in advance for the advice.
- John
Furthermore, the inevitable roughness of the filed area sometimes hid that I hadn't removed all the tooling marks, so I iterated back and forth between the file and the emery cloth. Overall, the prep of one bar took me five hours. That leaves me with two questions.
First, am I working to hard? I'm thinking that I should've used one of the little drill-mounted Scotchbrite wheels that came with the Avery kit or else perhaps I should get one of those grinder-mounted flap sanding wheels. I'd appreciate some pointers.
Second, as the parts came from the factory, there were some less than trivial depth (but still pretty small) gouges on the bars that didn't easily sand out. Here's the best picture I was able to get with my macro lens (click to enlarge):
Should I be doing anything more to these?
Thanks in advance for the advice.
- John