dales133 wrote:how much more glass have you got to go(?)
Um, all of it.
But seriously, let’s think about that. Where do we go from here? Well it is all dictated by the 60 inch width of the cloth vs. the 64 inch wide cabin. I want to glass the sides first so that they are the bottom plies in the seam where they wrap up onto the roof. Each of the side layups will be two plies at 0/90 deg running the full length of the trailer tucking under the floor and extending up on to the roof/hatch/front at least 3 inches along each side (probably more like 4 inches).
I’m not sure how I will wrap this under the floor yet. I dread doing a flox corner along the bottom of the floor on both sides all the way aft of the rock guards, but I don’t want to radius the bottom corner of the floor so much that it creates a “butt crack” with the chassis tube radius. I need to look at this closer and see what I think I can live with.
Before doing the walls the hatch needs to be in place so that the seam lines between sides and roof carry thru to the hatch and are consistent… although that might not be such an issue if I fair everything well before paint, I just want it to be consistent between hatch and roof and as symmetrical as possible if there are phantom lines from the seams that don't get worked out due to imperfect body work. Also, I am leaning toward doing the flox corners around the side doors in order to keep those body lines crisp(er).
The fit of the hatch will have to be double checked and adjusted at the galley side walls as needed. I probably should have left a bigger seal gap between the bumper and rear edge of the floor. Before the bumper glass this was only a scant 1/16 inch, so the ‘D’-shaped seal will be over compressed, especially at the corners where the glass plies are doubled up.
The front and roof glass will be the full 60 inches wide overlapping the side wraps about an inch or so along each side of the roof (cabin is 64 wide) running at 0/90 from the overlap with the hatch hinge glass I just did, forward to at least the top of the front locker bump out. The locker and sides of the front wall will probably be handled separately, including filling in the row of pocket screws underneath holding the locker to the front edge of the floor.
Once the side glass has been trimmed and sanded flush to the door jamb flox corners, I’ll do the door frame/jamb areas up to the door seal flanges. The outer faces of the flanges will just get sealed with wet epoxy so as to minimize added thickness to the flange and affecting the fit of the trim seal.
Back at the hatch I have to fill in some dents in the foam that came from rocking it over lumps in the folded sheet that was supposed to help protect it from damage. At least one of the two hatch skin plies will be oriented with the strands running diagonally (“on the bias”) from the top to the bottom corner (about 45 deg); and will overlap at both the hinge and bumper glass that I have already done.
Then I’ll cut the hatch free again and work on the hatch seal rabbet along the outer edge of the galley walls. The flox corners on the hatch side edges are already filled so that side of the seal will just need to be sanded back even. Then I can use the rabbeting bit and router to set the proper compression on the seal by cutting the rabbets into the outer edges of the galley wing walls. Then that corner can be back gouged and floxed; then the area of the rabbet where the seal makes contact can be glassed up to the step (up to the point where it is inside of where the seal contacts the top of the wall edge... the seal will be adhered to the underside of the hatch).
The roof fan opening and hatch actuator switch recess are simple cutouts that just get sanded flush, and that is pretty much it for the raw glass work. After that it is all sanding, fairing filler (or high build primer), paint prep and paint.
Whew, and you all are wondering why this thing isn’t covered yet!
BTW, Happy New Year!!!
Back to the build progress: today (Thursday) the sun came out and it warmed up to the middle 40’s (low 40’s by the time I got up on the hill… still some remnants of piled snow there). That, combined with Karl having run the wood stove downstairs all day resulted in a loft temperature of 50 deg F. So it was good enough to do the license plate recess glass layup.
Recall that I had already set up the PMPP for two stepped plies of 6oz bias scraps around the ogee like border of the recess. Tonight I cut a couple more strips of no bias to infill the flat portion of the smaller ply. Then I mixed up a batch of wet and poured it out over both arrangements. Strange thing was that I calculated wrong, adding the two single plies together and then multiplying both areas times my formula for two plies; then rounded up for the wet out planning to do wet on wet. It was still only 3oz of resin, so I guess that mitigated the math error.
Anyway, I mixed that and poured it out in drizzles, squeegeed both panels out roughly and dabbed at it some with a cut down chip brush. There were still a few areas that hadn’t soaked it in all the way, and it still seemed plenty wet (which is when I figured out my mistake), so I scooped up some of the excess back into the cup and brushed that on the plate area of the hatch to pre-wet it. You can just see the faint outline of the wet area here extending an inch or so around the plate recess.
By that time the panels had soaked in the wet. My guess is that the glass, plastic and table were still relatively cold, so it took a little time to soak in (as noted in the West System info for cold weather layups).
About this time Karl came up to check in on progress and lent a hand taking some “live action” photos. Here I am with the plastic laid over the smaller panel, squeegeeing it out.
Then I cut that out, peeled the bottom plastic, and laid it in position over the larger panel. Here I am squeegeeing down the smaller PMPP before peeling the smaller top plastic off.
Next I laid the bigger top plastic down and squeegeed it. Then I freed that all from the bench and cut out the bigger outline; folded it in half vertically and made a snip for the marker light wire; folded it on the wire hole horizontally and made another snip forming a star for the marker light wire to pass thru; then peeled the back off (carefully making sure that all of the individual scraps stayed attached to the top plastic as I peeled it); folded it back against the plastic along the vertical axis and aligned the wet half while enlisting Karl to help pass the wire thru the hole, all while attempting to keep it aligned. Once the wire was thru there were a few slight adjustments (wet on wet is still tricky even with the PMPP), but I managed to get as much of it squeegeed down with the top plastic still holding it pretty much in position. The bubbles you see are pretty much all between the relatively stiff plastic and the top of the lamination.
After carefully peeling the top plastic off, nudging a few of the butt seams back together, and pressing everything that had lifted back down a bit I had this.
I little more stippling with the cut down chip brush and we got to here.
Yeah, there are some lumpy areas where the foam and spackle weren’t as nice as I would have liked, but at least the glass seemed to follow the contour reasonably well, and it will cure hard enough now to bodywork it properly.
Strips of plastic squeegeed down around the perimeter to flatten out any edge nubbies.
I didn’t bother trying to peel ply the seams in the field under the plate. I figured these wouldn’t matter that much since they would be easier to sand and fair in the flat; and if they need too much attention they can be ignored behind the plate.
There was a small area on the lower left side of the inside radius were the glass pulled tight from squeegeeing the plastic, and another area just above and to the right of the marker light that seemed to have a wad of glass strand pushing up, so I stippled it all down again with the brush.
Once everything seemed good I wiped the wires off with a paper shop towel and taped them up out of the wetness.
This was an attempt to show the effect at the wire pass thru and what I will have to try and trim up once cured. The top edge appears uneven and scalloped, but that is just the edge of the plastic peel ply hanging over the edge of the recess. The actual recess is not perfect, but it is better than it appears here.
And that is where I walked away for the night. Fingers crossed until tomorrow (Friday).
); (2) make a larger radius on the bottom edge of the floor to wrap the glass under and just see how it goes later down the road; I guess it would not look horrible if the two radii matched each other, plus the rock guard could be made to cover over the gap at the front and along the sides as far back as the doors; and (3) if (2) and stuff does tend to collect in the groove, I could add a screw on piece of trim later down the road.
) I should have taken more care and warmed the tape with the hair dryer or heat gun. You can barely see the affected areas here just below the remaining blue tape (they look a little lighter).