The weather forecast called for beautiful skies and temperatures over the weekend, so I enlisted Eric’s assistance in starting to trim and fit the cabin cover to the fuselage. The idea is get everything aligned properly, then finish the interior metal painting. This way scratches produced during the fitting process will be reduced.
Faint scribe lines are on the fiberglass mold from the factory, but difficult to see under most conditions. I added electrical tape along the edge for a better visual reference when rough cutting with a Dremel tool.
The process is easy, but takes time. Rough cut near the scribe line, then hand sand until smooth. Then fit on the plane and continue sanding until everything lines up perfectly.
Here is a closer look at the rough out process.
A long wooden dowel is attached to a 22″ Great Planes sanding block. Eric guides the dowel along the opposite end while I smooth sand and get closer to the the scribe line. The dowel extension will approximately make the surfaces parallel on both sides.
The first rough fit shows additional material needs to be removed. Sand and refit until alignment is correct.