WS fairing

This was finished off the plane and then Sika on. Should i finish blend this to the top skin or leave it. Woried about thurmal expansion and cracking paint.

Looks great, Bret! Maybe a small application of ProSeal would do it? It's paintable, and it'll have a little give.

If you leave it as is, I think a nice, uniform line of separation will look fine.

Doug's right. If you blend and it cracks, the crack could go anywhere. If you leave a nice shatp transition edge and it cracks, it will crack right along the step edge and be almost unnoticeable.

That looks nice! How long did it take you to make it. I'll be there in a week or two.

well...I watched the RV 14 vid on the vansaircraft site, and had all intentions of doing it like them, but....I did a test of epoxy and glass fabric on plexi and aluminum....after curing they cam right off with one finger, WITH severe surface prep! and I am not that skilled, so I just plied on 10 or 12 layers of fabric saturated with west epoxy, stating with narrow and then fat ones, and added two layers on carbon on top. popped it off the packing tape the next day and started sanding with a 12" block. about 3 weeks. couple hrs a night and weekends. then Sikaflex onto plane. windshield was Sika on prior.

What sort of epoxy did you use for the test, Bret? I think the trick to getting a good bond here is to go Medieval on the sanding with 80 grit paper, on both aluminum and plexi. I got a wicked good bond with West Systems epoxy.

rightrudder said:

What sort of epoxy did you use for the test, Bret? I think the trick to getting a good bond here is to go Medieval on the sanding with 80 grit paper, on both aluminum and plexi. I got a wicked good bond with West Systems epoxy.

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I scuffed the heck out of it with deep cuts 40 grit, all clean and west slow epoxy.......on plexi and aluminum the fiberglass strip pulled off real easy...now then......have you ever tried to get Sika off anything, there are WAY more adhesion properties with this stuff!