Well, it has been an interesting week so far on the plane project. After getting back from a great visit to Washington D.C. and the newest member of my extended family, I promptly got back to work Tuesday night.

Tuesday:
I had the landing gear turned over and jigged up so that I could to the fore to aft reinforcing lay-ups on it. Things just started out a bit rocky... The epoxy pump was a bit clogged, stop to fix that, continue on but I couldn't seem to find my groove. Then about 2 cups of Micro epoxy into the lay-ups the hardener reservoir ran dry of hardener on the last pump into a cup, ruining that cup... Throw that away and dig out more hardener... aw.. might as well put a bit of resin in that reservoir since I have the whole thing open... OK all set again...

back to the lay-up... working working working.... this epoxy seems thicker than normal... (something tickles the back of my mind)... must be because the resin wasn't totally up to temp... (3 hours elapsed) FINALLY... DONE! Whew....

Now, I normally keep my garage at about 75-80 degrees when I have parts curing in there, but it got pretty cold here Tuesday night and I set the heater on low. The garage got down to a chilly 68 degrees when I checked in the morning... Oh well... Let me check to see how this part is curing.... Hmmmmmm still pretty tacky... (something tickles the back of my mind) Turn up the heat and off to work.

10 hours later I return home to a 75 degree garage and a lay-up that is still tacky.... (something really tickles the back of my mind) This is definitely not right. I do the scratch test on a couple of the later cups of epoxy that I used.... the last one is gooey.... OH crap! Maybe if I ignore this till tomorrow it will go away... (please :-)!

Wednesday:
Now at this point I realize that the epoxy pump ratio must have been off for the lay-up... So I check the first couple cups, both micro (contains microbaloons not small) mixes and they are perfect then I remembered running out of hardener while making my first batch of regular epoxy. Over to the cabinet door I go and look at the ratio setting..... NOT EVEN CLOSE. I check the ratio by weight.... NOT EVEN CLOSE... I then remembered bumping into the pump pretty hard when filling the reservoirs and realized that I must have bumped it off.

I spend the better part of the next hour re-calibrating the pump to perfection again, pump out a small cup of epoxy, mix it and let it set to cure for a test....

SIDE NOTE: I regularly check the ratio by weight on my pump (read: at least every 4-5 layups) with an electronic scale that I bought at the beginning of the project when I wasn't sure I would use a pump, and have never had a problem, with one exception; where I let it sit for about 5 months with epoxy in it without doing any work on the plane. I then broke it down, cleaned it, re-built it and re-calibrated. Perfect) I was even asked about this recently by a new builder visiting my project and I told them this... I guess I didn't knock on wood.

Now, there are very few parts that you must buy when building this plane because you make most of them. The core of the landing gear bow is one of them and it is NOT cheap to say the least. You don't want to have to buy more than one... EVER! To put it in perspective, I'd say that it is the equivalent of buying an alternator for a Ferrari except you have the only one in the world that runs backward and there is only one supplier.... If you can imagine that then you have some Idea of what it is like to have to buy this part...

Anyway, you don't want to have anything go wrong when you are working with it. Before you cut it you measure about 9 times and then check your work twice. You prep for your lay-ups on it in advance and you generally treat it like the queen of England. Gently and Correctly. Because of this, the idea that you may have just permanently screwed up the landing gear bow and lost all the work you already had into it as well as possibly having to write a check for another one is.... well..... Unattractive. I am going to sleep now. This is just a bad dream and I will wake up soon.... please.

Thursday: Yep it's still sticky and the cups are still gooey except for that one I mixed up yesterday after correcting the ratio. That one is hard as nails, just like it should be.

Now what to do about the 2/3 cured, tacky, very difficult to remove lay-up? Well I started by trying to peel it off. Then I tried scraping it off. Then I tried heating it a bit to try to get the epoxy to flow better so that I would come off. When that didn't work, I tried using mind power. As a last resort I considered whether the moisture from my tears would soak it off but then figured when that didn't work I might just dig a hole in the back yard, throw in the whole project, crawl in after it and pull in the dirt out of frustration so this last try had better be a bit more thought out and founded in reality.... DEEP SLOW BREATH.

Ok... Call the company I got it from (Featherlite)... I can't be the only bonehead on the planet whose epoxy pump ratio has been off in the past, see if they have any ideas for me.

Now I called Featherlite and got Mike on the phone. Mike was calm, Mike was friendly. Mike let me blubber on until my entire story was out. ...And then, in the last, when I asked how much this mistake was going to cost me and did they have another in stock , Mike told me that everything was going to be alright and that if he were me, he wouldn't buy a new one. He then told me the best way to remedy my problem. It was tough, it involved work, it involved no damage to my landing gear... But!!!, I was an experimental aircraft builder and had already overcome a ton just to be one and to have gotten this far. He then suggested I go buy this $5 tool.... Yes you read that right... $5! "Buy a couple just in case you break one." he said. It was called a Sureform tool... "That's a brand name." he said, "But don't buy the brand name one, just get a generic one." He described it to me. I have one of those!!!!!!

That was the ticket!!! 4 hours worth of scraping and fiddling and I had those crummy half-cured, crappy epoxy ratio layers off there and there was NO damage to the gear. A bit of sanding and some gummed up sandpaper later and I am good to go. but not tonight....

Whew! Bullet dodged!

Back at it tomorrow though... Just gotta pay more attention to those tingles in the back of my head...


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