Sunday, July 7, 2019

Doors - the beginning

Based on the experiences of others I have decided to do the doors next.  This will allow me to fit the strut brackets before I install the overhead console.  As such this post begins what I expect to be a couple of months worth of door posts...

First step is to trim the door skins to a more reasonable size and then begin the process of fitting and (even more) trimming to fit the opening in the cabin.  The initial trimming is complete, the doors are bonded together, and the final door assembly has been trimmed yet again to fit into the opening.  The hinges have been attached and the doors actually operate as intended!

One other item of note is I've moved the fuselage over to the big side of the main garage bay and I've disassembled the divider wall.  I can still fit both cars in the garage and I now have room to install the motor mount, tail components, and maybe even the engine (without the tail installed).   I did have to order and install a new garage door opener for the small bay and while I was at it I decided to upgrade the lighting in the garage to all LED.

Door's cleco'd to the fuselage so I could drill the holes to hold the door on while the two halves cure...see more below.
Two things of interest in this picture.  First the fiberglass in the top of the picture.  This is a product called Parabeam.  Its hard to see but its actually a 3D type of material with two skin's sandwiched around a lattice structure that gives the whole thing a mattress look and feel.  Second is the spreader I used to lay the epoxy/Cabosil mixture onto the doors.  I used a little trick I learned while doing tile work.  The edge of this spreader is notched so that I can lay a consistent layer of epoxy to bind the two door halves together.

The inner half of the door sanded and ready for wet-out and epoxy mix.

Fuselage with a layer of plastic as well as some packing tape to keep the doors from sticking to them.

Left side door cleco'd to the fuselage after I spent about an hour wetting out the Parabeam, wetting out the surfaces where the epoxy/Cabosil mix will meet, and the finally the epoxy/Cabosil mixture applied.

Lots of squeeze out so hopefully I got a nice amount of coverage.
On the right side door I managed to take a picture of the epoxy/Cabosil mixture after I had "combed" it with the spreader I mentioned above.

A look from inside the cockpit through the baggage door after I had cleco'd the right side door on for curing.

Remember that Parabeam stuff I mentioned earlier?  Well this is what it looks like when its cured.  You can see the inner lattice from this perspective.  I took this picture looking inside from the center latch hole I cut.

Left side door trimmed to fit into the opening.
The plans have you cut an AN3 bolt to act as the hinge pin for the doors.  Its a good idea but I decided to use Ben's lathe to round off the head and trim it down a bit to fit in the pocket a little better.

Of course every RV-10 builder has to take a picture of the first time to door opens on its own hinges.  Those gull wing doors are just awesome!
Once the doors were trimmed to fit it was time to start putting the actuation mechanism in place.  This is the pocket that the handle sits in.

Trimming the Delrin guides to fit their pockets.

Center gear assembly installed and aft actuator rod attached to the rack piece that goes into the center latch.