Brief Description: Canard templates as sanding blocks
When I was helping Joe Coraggio balance his elevators a few weeks ago, I was really nervous i'd mess up his contour. But he had the Eureka CNC contour checking templates on hand so I thought I'd use them with some sandpaper as a sanding block and it worked fantastically well. In fact, when finsihed, I had his elevators balanced and with an even better contour than before. Awesome. This got me thinking...my canard is nowhere near perfect in contour and actually far off enough to be laughable. Even so, my stall characteristics are great! BUT..... there was a time that I went through rain and not only did I notice a small stream of water curling around and back forward on the right elevator, but my aircraft actually began to roll as well! What! Well, now I'm thinking I could improve my rigging by re-contouring my canard. I got Steve over at Eureka CNC on the phone and he was kind enough to send me enough templates to bond together, forming a sanding block. So cool! After bonding them together as lined up as possible, I sanded them as flush to each other as possible. I then skim coated all of them using west systems in order to give a long lasting durability and even smoother finish for better contour. The skim must be REALLY thin to avoid changing the thickness but luckily the 2 coats soaked up into the MDF really well giving a waterproof barrier. I will be using these exclusively when building other canards under 323composites so I need them to last. I may sand down this coat and add another but maybe I'm just fiddling at this point :)
