It was great to get back working on my plane again. The time flew by as I think this was the longest I have worked in one session in a long time at about 2.5hrs.
During this time I finished covering one side of the fuselage. From the pilots perspective this was the front left side, as seen in the featured image at the top. Due to all the curves you have to deal with when covering this area it is a slow and detailed oriented process.
It starts first measuring out the piece of covering with some excess all around. Then you line it up to where you want it, about a quarter inch overlay with the back piece. I then tacked it down in a few places starting top middle and worked my way along the top edge, pulling tight to do some on the side and looking through the covering you can see where the outline for the wing to sit in resides to tack some along there as well.
I then cut off a major portion of the covering that was excess over the opening for the wing. Once that is done in order to make the curve look nice and to protect the edge of the wood I cut the covering into many small sections. Then using the iron I ironed each piece to the edge and over onto the inside of the wood.
After that I changed focus to the front portion and just trimmed off the overhang along the landing gear plate and up to the end of the fuselage bottom (where covering already existed). Once I’m into new territory at the nose I trim off the necessary excess and then start making a bunch of cuts for small pieces. I iron these pieces to the edge again and wrap it around and iron to the inside of the doubler. You can see where I started and left off on the R in the image below.
Once that is done and I have worked my way back to the top deck, following the same folding over process though due to a straighter edge I can fold wider pieces, I can trim the excess you see below from the front of the top deck all the way back to the cockpit. If you look closely at the top image you can see that this was done there as there is no excess and you can see where the top deck curves in the image.
That concluded a longer session that flew by! I’m planning on heading over to finish off the R side this afternoon. Will have to wait and see what else I get done.