Lower Cowl Plug

After trying a few other methods of making the plug for the lower cowl, I finally braced it and cut a giant hole in it. That allowed me to use flat pieces of foam to create a shape.

I drew the inlet shapes in CAD and rough cut the foam on the bandsaw, then screwed it to the braces.

From there I used a welding rod to lay out the curves and used aluminum tape as the guide for the hot wire.

From there I rough sanded it to shape by eye, then coated it in lightweight spackling compound (with blue epoxy dye) so that I could see what the shape really looked like.

After numerous applications of filler, it looks something like the picture above. I still have to finish shaping the inlet and finish sanding, then its on to spraying some PVA and laying up the glass.

Between sanding the blue foam and the blue filler, I pretty much look like Grumpy Smurff ; )