Finishing the Cowl Shape

Here is why I keep saying "the epoxy is dyed X to aid in sanding". As I have mentioned in the past, there is very little left of the original cowl. The pictures below are of the inside of the lower cowl, where the new oil cooler duct is glued into place. The dye makes it easy to see when I have sanded away the remainder of the original cowl to meet the new piece. It also makes it easy to identify where the runs are, and when sanding them out, see when you have removed them.

Here is another example of where dying the epoxy helps. Below I am just starting to sand the top cowl to its final shape. Since the new nose bowl shape was laid up over a plug, the epoxy had to overlap the existing cowl. To get back to the shape of the plug, I had to lay up glass on the inside of the cowl to bond the two together. I ended up laying up quite a few layer of mat glass (dyed red) to give myself lots of depth to blend the two pieces together. Having the epoxy dyed a different color lets me see how deep I am sanding. 

Below you can see the difference after a bit of blending. The cowl cheek on the left of the picture has been rough blended, the right has not been touched.

Today I continued to work on blending the cheeks and fixing a number of other alignment issues. The two pictures  below show some further blending of the left cheek, both lower and upper. I am still not happy with the shape on the bottom. I will have to add a bit more mat glass to it and continue to blend them together. 

I had hoped to get further with it this weekend, but this stuff takes time. More to follow as I continue to blend the cowl to its final shape.