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Rear Window finishing

R

rvamateur

Active Member
Two questions:

I see a black boarder on the inside of most finished RV10's. Are people painting a boarder on the inside or using some black tape?

Secondly, I have used a glass tape to overlap on the window's outside but getting nice neat edge on the transition from glass to plexi is poor....I am cautious about sanding that edge in fear of scratching the glass:confused:........any tips?
 
rvamateur said:
Two questions:

I see a black boarder on the inside of most finished RV10's. Are people painting a boarder on the inside or using some black tape?

Secondly, I have used a glass tape to overlap on the window's outside but getting nice neat edge on the transition from glass to plexi is poor....I am cautious about sanding that edge in fear of scratching the glass:confused:........any tips?
Click to expand...

The easiest way to finish the inside is to use the headliner from Aeroport Products. Besides finishing the inside of the cabin cover, it also adds a blck trim piece around the window. It's a great time saver, since you don't have to spend time sanding the cabin cover top.

I can't address the external yet, since I won't be doing that step for a few more weeks. My guess is to put some electrical tape on the window to use as a stop.
 
Window trim

The inside of the side windows on my airplane have a headliner and a rope type trim piece that glues in place. On the outside of the windows I have one layer of glass tape. This tape bridges the window and the fiberglass canopy top. This tape was positioned by butting it up to a thick layer of electric tape to maintain a consistent distance all the way around the window, the electric tape is then removed. It was finished with micro-balloon using the same process. This will give you a strong, secure window and a nice transition to the aircraft. Once the aircraft is ready for paint my painter at my direction painted a 1/2 wide black trim around the outside of the window that borders the tape/micro edge. This is just how a modern car is done however the black is on the inside. I would not recommend painting across the fiberglass tape edge and onto the window (the paint will eventually crack all the way around the window). The black not only stands out very nice against your paint color (opinion) but it does a great job hiding whatever imperfections you may have from gluing in the windows and hiding the rope trim material that at least came with my interior kit (Flight line). If you go to Doug's photo album on his site you will see pictures of the airplane with the black trim windows.

Pat
 
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I put a fillet of microballoons on the inside edge. It looks okay, but I'm not terribly happy with it.

I think my next plan is to work on getting some round foam and that I can cut into 'quarter round'. Then I'm going to try and put it in the edge corners and use that as a mold to build a fiberglass transition ring. Who knows if it will work, but I do wish there was a better way to make the transitions.

The door transitions are worse because you can't use the headliner trick that Bob spoke of.I just don't think there is any good way to do it because weld-on sticks to everything and you end up with weld-on mounds all along the inside edge - even with tape.

Phil
 
Phil said:
I put a fillet of microballoons on the inside edge. It looks okay, but I'm not terribly happy with it.

I think my next plan is to work on getting some round foam and that I can cut into 'quarter round'. Then I'm going to try and put it in the edge corners and use that as a mold to build a fiberglass transition ring. Who knows if it will work, but I do wish there was a better way to make the transitions.

The door transitions are worse because you can't use the headliner trick that Bob spoke of.I just don't think there is any good way to do it because weld-on sticks to everything and you end up with weld-on mounds all along the inside edge - even with tape.

Phil
Click to expand...

Phil,

I have the exact weld on problem you mentioned. The rope trim covers the weld on so its not visible on the inside and the black paint trim on the outside hides the weld on and rope trim on the outside.

Pat
 
If I've got you right, you are talking about the glass flange that gets the weld-on (beneath the windows). If you paint an equal width color border on the plexi outside you can only see the edge of this flange. I painted them all black first and was really careful that the weld-on didn't squoze all over it. Had a couple small spots where the white got on the black is all. After curing I touched those with black using a tiny brush. This way no matter which angle you look in the window edge you can't see any weld-on blobbage. All 5 windows this way (plus black pigment in the windshield fillet epoxy. Also, instead of washers for spacers, I set rivnuts all around rear windows & windshield (head towards plexi). That provided anchors for all the inside window surrounds. Kinda like chicago screws sticking out inside.
 
Thanks

All great input. Thanks for coming through for me (again). Have been working them today laying up the external glass and it went pretty well. I think in addition to finishing them out on the inside with trim I will be adding a 1/4" or so black strip of paint on the glass (I did this on the outside under the glass) Thanks again.
 
It looks like you are getting all the help you need.
Here is what I did.
Just like you, I used rivnuts both for space and on the backend (inside) for anchor points for a closeout ring.
I made the closeout ring the thickness of those rivenuts and used 1/4 " screws to attach the trim piece. The rivenut stub also provides a positive stop so you cannot run a screw into the plexi.
Outside, I started with 2 layers of electrical tape the first to absorb the thickness of the glass layer overlap and the second to allow for a very small amount of filler to feather out the transition.
The key to a good look was the even overlap of trim or filler on both sides of the window so no unfinished surface is exposed to either side.
The filler extends about an 1/8" of an inch bejond the flange.

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It strikes me that if you simply fill the gap between the window and the canopy with flox (as per the plans) then you will eventually get a crack. Therefore using a lightweight fabric/epoxy along the edge and then dressing it as per the widscreen istructions makes a lot of sense. What I don't understand is the black border. Yes, you have to hide the WeldOn and flange on the inside, but why not simply take the outside colour all the way?
 
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