I really need to finish these tips up. So I decided to give this fiberglassing thing a shot today. I hung the HS (with elevators) up on the wall so I could have my table space back. Following Jim's fiberglassing for RVs tutorial (Jim is another one of the Austin RV builders I've met), I got all my goodies together and set them up on the table. I cut three pieces of BID, two for the HS tips and one for the VS tip. You can see all the stuff in this pic taken just before mixing up the resin and going at it.
Here are the pieces after 20+ minutes of fighting with them and trying to learn how to get the glass in there. The 20+ minutes is an important number, because by the time I got to the VS tip, the resin in the cup was getting pretty hard already. So I didn't get to put much resin on the tip before I stuck the saturated fiberglass in there. Hopefully it'll adhere just fine, but we'll have to see. It'll all get covered up and filled with more epoxy and glass beads, so I'm not too worried about it. And the other interesting thing about it is that the stuff puts off a lot of heat when it cures, enough that the bottom of the plastic cup was starting to melt! I think I got it all finished up just in time. Any longer and the fiberglass pieces would have been getting tough to work...
I roughened up all the aluminum backing strips with 60 grit sandpaper, and proceded to stick on the ones for the elevator tips. I mixed up a second batch of epoxy (Just one squirt of each.. The first batch I used 3 of each, but could have gotten by just fine with 2, I think). I spread a thin coat on the tips and a thin coat on the backing strips and stuck them in place. I'm using clecos and cleco clamps to hold it in place while it cures. I'm really nervous about the epoxy premenantly attaching the clecos, though, so I'm keeping an eye on it and twisting them around a bit to make sure they're not stuck yet. If it cures enough tonight, I might just go ahead and rivet these things in, so I don't have to worry about it, but that probably won't happen. (3 hours after application it's still kinda gooey and not holding the strip in place without the clecos yet).
