Brace for impacts

Back home, and it was time for final trimming and shaping.

The hull not only tapers from top to bottom, but allowances must be made at the hull/panel junction for any flexing as a result of hard landings or water impacts. The edges were brought in about 1/8”, and a D cell battery made a fine radius for the corner.

 

 

We had left the panel oversized, and Jim had drawn a max amount that could be trimmed off the bottom while allowing for an aluminum brace to be ran along the edge. Sitting in the cockpit I scrunched and wiggled and bent my legs around, looking to see how much room I needed vertically and laterally. Aesthetically, I wish I had made the wing panels deeper for more of an LSX style corner panel triangle, but that was the limit of my mold. “On my next SeaRey......”

While Jim said I could cut up to 1 1/4” from the bottom, I looked at the margin underneath the MFD and decided that it would bring the reinforcement brace too close to the base of the Skyview for my taste, and that trimming off another 3/4” would be enough. When we made the instrument cutouts the tape had served well to keep the veneer from splintering, so I ran another line of blue tape before measuring, marking, checking twice and cutting. I'm also glad I did not do the center console, it's nice to have the room to wiggle my feets.

First I cut the broad swatch of the base, then sketched the step from the wing to the center panel. I was worried that each side would be different, so after sketching them I used a small protractor to check the angle. Surprisingly, both were within a few degrees of each other, near 45 degrees. There's some meaning to that, I’m sure, but I’ll leave the magic of a 45 to others to explain. 

 

As usual, my Dremel stylus tool sanded the curve, with a little fine tuning once inside. The grain of the veneer at the base of the panel is at an angle, and it's sometimes difficult to overcome the optical illusion that I’m cutting my lines off-line, when I know they're correct.

Tape removed, time to sit back, relax and enjoy the work. One surprise was the solid, woody, almost sensual *thunk* the switches make I've not heard in other SeaReys, I'd like to think the panel has something to do with it.

Later a friend stopped by and pretended to wipe the spittle from the panel, telling me to not make such a mess when I was sitting making  “Pbbbbttttttt, pbbbbttttttt." airplane noises. Ummm... guilty, except for the spittle. 

A lousy photo, I was trying to sneak it in, but Merrill Wien stopped by to check on my progress, and share a tale of flying C-119 Boxcars in a classified program to retrieve Corona spy satellite capsules in midair. Merrill is writing his biography, and I can't wait to hear the stories he's putting down about his family's life and his flying career. I’m lucky I’ve gotten to know him.

In the meantime Mike dropped off his nosedeck, he's going to have Jim install his “Megahatch” and hitched a ride with mine. Jim will integrate my panel and nosedeck into one unit while  he installs the avionics/electrical.

Trimmed to final size and shape, the panel is very flimsy along the bottom edge, and by the time all the avionics are added in it's carrying a considerable load. A piece of 3/4” 6061-T6 takes care of the flexing and reinforces the bottom, it got trimmed for switches and the backup fuel pump circuit breaker.

 

 

I did a test with some scrap to see if resin alone would hold the angle to the panel, and the test held fine but I decided to add a half dozen #6 stainless steel screws too. Note the two center screws are vertically aligned with the radio mounts, the back of the radio stack will mount into these screws.

 

 

The screws also served to hold the strip in place while the West Systems 205 set up. Note how close to the MFD the reinforcing strip is, I’m glad I only trimmed 3/4” off the bottom of the panel.

I left the screws in place for about 3 hours, then gently removed them so they would not become permanently attached and replaced them with clamps for the final setup overnight. I did get a couple small bits of epoxy leakage around two of the screws, nothing that a swipe with the sandpaper didn't easily fix.

Before I left for a trip this morning I took the clamps off, the epoxy will have a few good days to finish setting up while I'm gone. Hopefully the labels will be done when I get back, and I'll try to figure out the glovebox hinging.