Closing the gaps

A few years ago my airline underwent a merger with another one, and I spent a lot of time on the airplane last year waiting for the dust to settle. With Jim's help I got far more done than I dreamed, but now that the merger is over and I know my job is secure, the priority for this year is finding a home for Giuliana and I.


Einar has some projects he needs to do in the big shop, and we've moved OspRey from the paint shop into his home garage.

First he put his welding talents to use repairing a horse trailer for a local charity. Painting the trailer also allowed him to start using the paint booth and get a feel for the changes he was going to have to make to make it fully useable for painting the SeaRey.

I'm working on the airplane as I can, and with Osp settled into her new digs I was able to complete the aileron gap seal on the right wing.

 A couple days later I got the rudder gap seal done. A LOT easier to do than the ailerons and flaps!

A few weeks later I had a nice block of days off, and I had planned on some quality time in the shop finishing up the gap seals. Nature had other plans, though, and I ended up miserably sick for almost the entire time. Wasn't a total waste since Bellingham got hit by a blizzard at the same time.
 

An old trick from model airplanes, blocking up the trailing edge of the elevator before starting the gap seals.

Hard to see in these images, but one thing I was being anal about was getting the gap seals even so they don't bulge enevenly upward (top), but instead line up nicely (bottom).

Something else I tried was to just pin the top edges of the gap seal, then pin the bottom before drilling/clecoing all the holes in-between. It worked fine, but I'm not sure one method is better than another.

Next day I came back out and did the left elevator. Since it's a kitplane by an amateur builder, there's bound to be some variation between the left and right side, but fitting the right hand gap seals onto the left elevator showed that the fit was acceptable, and I was able to use them as a template.

I decided just pinning the top and bottom corners was the easiest method after all

Off to work for a few days, going to snow again while I'm gone. I think my garden is going to be nothing but frostbitten stumps this spring....