Canard – bzvelocity.com

Canard Fairing, continued

Now for the top surface. Lots of micro, even more sanding.

The canard low spots around the spar were first filled with micro and sanded flat. The the entire surface was covered with a thin layer of micro and was sanded flat using a long sanding board. This process will test your back and arms. And patience.

New Year’s Cutouts

Using the supplied templates, the door openings were cut out the fuselage to fit the doors. This was an iterative process because the templates (flat) will not conform properly to the fuselage (compound curvature).

Using the canard template, the canard doghouse was cut out flush with the top of the canard bulkhead.

Winglet join and final canard glassing

Multiple overlapping (and tapered) layers of glass used to hold winglet to wingtip. Canard was sanded and another layer of triax was draped on and wetted out. Fixture allows rotating canard to allow easy access to both top and bottom during wet-out.

Glassing top surface of canard

The canard was removed from the filtering, turned over, and prepped for glass. The usual mixture of sanding, grinding, micro, cabo, draping glass, and wetting out was used. The top glass bonded to the bottom glass at the trailing edge, and overlapped the bottom glass underneath the leading edge.

Glassing canard bottom

The canard foam was sanded. There were a number of locations where the solidified micro had oozed out of joints, and this had to be ground back to make the surface flush. Micro was spread over the canard bottom surface and squeegeed fair. Cabo was used as a final filler, and then triax was draped over the canard and wetted out with resin.

Building up canard

The canard spar was sanded and clamped to the canard fixture. The lift tabs (where the canard will be bolted to the fuselage) were screwed into the center of the spar. The leading and trailing edges for the canard were removed from the foam billets and bonded to the canard spar with micro.