Doorway

The brief intermission finally came to and end and I could start the doorway flange lamination. Mould is in place, imperfections filled and I have started laying carbon.

Menno was kind to share the difficulties he experienced at this stage, and I had exactly the same problems but thanks to the warning I had the necessary remedies in hand to overcome the problem.  Now curing. 

The cured first part of the flange:

And a detail from inside, not yet trimmed:

Then, rather than finishing the inside layers of tape, I moved on to finish the outside.  The F-22 comes with a lot of nice features like integrated chainplates and rudder gudgeons which I really like, and I would like to do as much as possible that way.  Hence, I make the groove for the lexan doorway panels an integrated part of the construction.  I started out making a mould to sit in place for the lexan.

It was temporarily fixed to the opening from the inside:

Then I made a flange outside of this mould.  It will be trimmed back to make a 1 cm deep groove around the opening to receive the doorway panels.  I will drill drain holes in the bottom part.

 

Detail of the flange/groove.  Seen from top, up is the doorway flange, aft is the cockpit side.  The bottom of the groove is epoxy filler and several layers of carbon 'A' equivalent is making up the flange.  I first tried to make it using some heavier carbon I had lying, but I have never used this fabric without vacuum before and that also proved impossible as the fabric was just too stiff to make it follow the curves.  So I spent some time making this and I really hope it will work.  If it does, several loose parts (wood/plastic and aluminium parts screwed to the hull) are eliminated.