just prime this d&^% thing? The picture below illustrates the rudder bottom tip I am working on.
It represents my whole fiberglass struggle to date. Nothing has fit well and has required lots of cutting, reglassing, floxing, micro, etc to get the parts to look like they belong on the same airplane.
The rudder bottom didn't fit and the only way was to slip the forward end inside the rudder spar instead of outside. It looks a little dorky at the corners but its mostly out of the airstream. At the same time the bulbous front portion was too wide and it and the rudder skin struck the rear fuselage skin as the rudder swung. I had to cut a fair amount of fuselage and v-stab skin and also narrow the fiberglass by laying up glass on the inside to get the rudder to swing properly. And yes, the spar is straight and I tried evey combination of diffent lengths in the bearings
Finally I got everything looking good and applied a squeege layer of epoxy to cover the whole thing. The result was runs, sags and squeegee marks everywhere. Sanding those off with 400 left holes in the epoxy layer that even hi-fill primer wouldn't hide. What you see is the tip resanded to remove all the hi-fill primer, epoxy coating, any microballoons and most of the gel coat. There probably is some micro fill in places but the whole thing is nice and smooth and only a couple of pinholes in the epoxy-glass area that can be easily filled.
Why can't I just prime this piece and get a decent result? Is adding an expoxy covering necessary? Do I need some kind of UV coating to protect the epoxy? I am going to use PPG Omni epoxy primer and one of the PPG paints.
Dave A.
It represents my whole fiberglass struggle to date. Nothing has fit well and has required lots of cutting, reglassing, floxing, micro, etc to get the parts to look like they belong on the same airplane.
![rbottom.jpg](/community/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fpages.suddenlink.net%2Ftismuoi9%2Frbottom.jpg&hash=9cd89e086525c0d87fcbfe7a450c3fab)
The rudder bottom didn't fit and the only way was to slip the forward end inside the rudder spar instead of outside. It looks a little dorky at the corners but its mostly out of the airstream. At the same time the bulbous front portion was too wide and it and the rudder skin struck the rear fuselage skin as the rudder swung. I had to cut a fair amount of fuselage and v-stab skin and also narrow the fiberglass by laying up glass on the inside to get the rudder to swing properly. And yes, the spar is straight and I tried evey combination of diffent lengths in the bearings
Finally I got everything looking good and applied a squeege layer of epoxy to cover the whole thing. The result was runs, sags and squeegee marks everywhere. Sanding those off with 400 left holes in the epoxy layer that even hi-fill primer wouldn't hide. What you see is the tip resanded to remove all the hi-fill primer, epoxy coating, any microballoons and most of the gel coat. There probably is some micro fill in places but the whole thing is nice and smooth and only a couple of pinholes in the epoxy-glass area that can be easily filled.
Why can't I just prime this piece and get a decent result? Is adding an expoxy covering necessary? Do I need some kind of UV coating to protect the epoxy? I am going to use PPG Omni epoxy primer and one of the PPG paints.
Dave A.