Chapter 4

Bulkheads

This chapter is fairly easy, mostly you do flat layups with different materials. An excellent place to start for first time homebuilders. First thing you will notice is that these pieces are much larger than the practice layups...Much larger! But they still are easy to knock out! There are really only two points that were the least bit difficult for me. First was the harpoint for the landing gear attach. It is made from 22 plys of BID. Two hardpoints made from one piece. But I had a lot of scraps left over (some from an early miscut) so I made two small pieces and cut one hardpoint from each piece. That was easy, but difficult was getting 22 plys of BID to line up on an edge. I just couldn't get the knack for doing it without stretching the cloth to some distorted form of what it use to be. This made it hard (more like impossible) to measure it's thickness. Finally I gave up and decided to just go with the 22 plys and hoped they would be 1/4" thick for fitting in the foam. Well I got lucky, they fit beautifully! The other stickler were the stiffners on the instrument panel. Here you need to make a few funny angles, and get the cloth to form a channel. Nat fails to mention the best method for this. Most people (including me) cut wood the same length and height of each stiffner, wrap in duct tape (or clear packing tape) and use these as a guide. This method works out great! If I did this again I would use BID tape to create the channels as it doesn't have the tendency to unravel like cut bid strips. But since I used cut bid, I made the channels a bit larger than they needed to be and then cut them to size with my dremel and a cut off wheel. Sorry for the lack of construction photos, but these were lost in my hard drive failure. One chapter done....twenty-two to go!

Forward Bulkheads	LG Bulkheads
Front Seatback	Temp Firewall
Instrument Panel	LG Bulkheads Again