Cabin Cover - First Cut

We accomplished the first cut of the cabin cover tonight... woohoo! It went mostly "okay"... definitely a big gear shift from all the aluminum metal work that we've grown accustomed to. Sarah will be involved quite a bit more these days too, since she has earned the esteemed title of "fiberglassing expert" on this team (you may remember from one of our first-ever posts about the EAA SportAir Workshop we attended, I took the sheet metal course and Sarah took the fiberglass course). In truth, we both have a lot to learn about fiberglass work, and we'll be taking it slowly and carefully, and hopefully not end up splitting the cover in half or something and end up needing to order a new one. I'm fairly certain this thing isn't cheap.

So with that, it was time to get started! We donned our dust masks and safety glasses, got the shop vac ("R2") handy, and grabbed our secret weapon: a Dremel MultiMax oscillating saw. Sarah mentioned that they used one of these in her fiberglassing class to cut cured pieces, and it cut through them like butter and made very little dust. Excited to see how it works!

Team Mike & Sarah ready to cut some 'glass!

Moments after this photo was taken, we discovered that the oscillating saw works TERRIBLY on the cabin cover. It bounces all over the place and barely made any kind of cut at all. On the bright side I guess it didn't make much dust either, so it did live up to that end of the bargain. So, we went back to the normal plan and grabbed the air cut-off tool. After installing a fresh cutting disk, we got started. In a demonsration of her multi-tasking abilities, Sarah took this video of the first cut while holding the vacuum nozzle:

First cut of the cabin cover!

It's a relatively slow process, and even though we have a decent-sized air compressor, I've long known that it isn't quite big enough to run the air-hungry cutoff tool continuously. It will go for a minute or two but then runs out of steam and needs a few minutes to recharge. No big deal, just something to be aware of. After a handful of cut/recharge cycles, we had made all the necessary cuts to attempt an initial fit of the cover!

Initial fit of the cabin cover - doesn't quite slide into place yet!

Nowhere near enough yet! That's ok... hey, at least we didn't cut off too much. Now it's going to be many cycles of cutting and sanding, trial fitting, and figuring out where the high spots are that need more cutting and sanding. This was enough for one night... but we'll get back to this soon!