Travels with Puff

In case you haven't heard, Richard's book about his adventure with Puff is now available from Amazon, or even better, from your local independent bookstore. 

"Lasers" (but no sharks)

So what do you do with leftover veneer????


I needed some green and blue plastic labels for the Water and Ground gear warning lights, and while at Bay Engraving looking at the trophies I thought "Hmmmmm...." Talked with Kurt and a week later

I had him laser etch the labels in both light and dark sections of the scrap, which meant G & I got to play Scrabble with them and debate what looked best where.

Plus it looked different in the light of day the next morning, and after having some stain applied to the extras to test. I decided the dark background with dark lettering was just too dark to see, so we went with light overall.
 

Finally I taped them to the panel, sprawled out in the living room in SeaRey flying position and did some more Hmmmm'ing.
 

 

One of the hardest things was to decide the placement, above or below the switches. In some cases I didn't have a choice, in other cases after it was all done I realized small changes that would have made it look better. Oh well, nothing got put in the wrong place or upside down, so it's all good. 

Lots of clamps hold small pieces of cheap Harbor Freight straightedges I cut up and fixed in place.

Upon seeing a new airplane, most people immediately head to the cockpit and check out the panel ("Hey kid, want to look in the cockpit?"). I know Osp is going to gather attention because there aren't too many SeaReys up here (yet!), and for my own pride of building I wanted her panel to look beautiful, so I was pretty hesitant about this part.

We thought about some very thin doublestick tape, but decided against it in favor of a firmer glue attachment. This is a little CA (superglue) gel that was given to me as a sample to try a while back but never got around to using. Experimenting, I found the first small amount would soak into the paper backing, then stabilize and a tich more could be applied for the bond. It took a little practice to find the perfect amount that gave a bond but did not seep out, and a couple spots needed a little work with a knife point and/or sandpaper when it was all done, but overall it worked fantastic. If I was going to do it again, I'd probably use 30 min epoxy, though.

The other good thing about the IC-Gel was that it did not set up right away, but gave about 20-30 seconds before bonding. This was perfect because I could still make small adjustments, not so perfect because a couple parts moved slightly after placement. I had drawn some small pencil marks, but they would be covered when I put the piece down, and I thought the glue would adhere instantly. Since it turned out it took 20-30 seconds for the CA to set up, I wish I had used the pencil marks and 30 min epoxy, I could have made small changes to fine tune the layup after putting the piece down. Then again, in those 30 minutes the piece might have moved completely out of position and left a glue smear, sooo.....

The usual stack of gloves...

Followed by my old friend, the vacuum bag. I didn't pull a heavy vacuum, just enough (~20") to give a gentle but firm press for a couple hours.

The upper left Water is one that got away from me, about 1/32" off nominal above the alignment with the warning light, and the bottom light labels are off ~1/64" from left-right. I know, small things and probably won't be noticed, but one strives for perfection. And again, by blind luck I only trimmed 3/4" off the bottom, which was the perfect amount.

The rest came out just beautiful. Can't wait to see Gordon work his stain and varnish magic on it.

The Aux Power and Headset on the right wing are examples of seeing what I should have done after it was too late. Instead of aligning the bottom of the labels, I should have aligned the tops and stepped the Aux Power label down above the power socket. And Yes, as I was typing this I had to get up and fiddle with it a little to see if I could lift the Aux Power label up and reposition it. Not a chance, I'll have to live with it.

I thought about trying to remove them and going for a redo, but I remembered a story (and G told me a similar one) that one should always put a small flaw in your work that only you know about, to remind yourself that you are not perfect and to stay humble. I'm nowhere near good enough to have to intentionally put flaws into my work to stay humble, I find enough flaws as it is.


Now, about those glovebox hinges....