While I was cleaning up my old computer, I found lots of pictures from my old job!
One of my favorite (and most annoying) tasks was documented.
If you've been following my blog for any substantial amount of time, or know me, I went to school for aircraft maintenance and found my "knack" in composite fabrication and construction.
That was a very expensive lesson, but to this day, I still have a passion for putting things together. And even though fiberglass and carbon fiber burns like the ball hairs of satan himself, I still adore working with it.
So one day, someone brought in a rudder that had been... well, fucked.
It was part of a lightsport aircraft kit (basically, a build-your-own-airplane model box for big boys). It had sat in their "climate controlled" (i.e. controlled BY THE ACTUAL CLIMATE) shed. And it basically got rotted away, as brittle parts are wont to do in prolonged exposure to heat.
Owner of business that didn't know his ass from his elbow:
"Here, fix this."
Me:
"... wut."
Let's not talk about the fact that it looks like it was put together by Edward Scissorhands laden with putty knives in the throws of a coke bender.
I walked around outside, having a couple cigarettes, and contemplated my life choices.
I was currently the sole employee. I couldn't ask anyone for advice because to say these people were inept is an insult to the inept.
I think I spent the better part of the day circling the part, mumbling under my breath and trying to figure out how I am going to fix this fucking thing without destroying it. It was already assembled, and basically, couldn't be broken down again.
I was sitting in front of it, staring at the gaping maw of resin-ed death, eating a lukewarm hot pocket with eyes glazed over with the sheen of someone that is slowly losing the will to live when it hit me.
I've repaired holes in walls before. Why couldn't I just use the same method for that?
FUCKING BRILLIANT.
First step: Mark the weak points, clean up the rough, brittle edges and reinforce.
Carbon fiber saturated in resin and placed very gently... and pressed in place with the sheer force of swear words. And some weights.
While I waited for that to cure, I made up a microballoon slurry and began to fill in the... very ill-aligned pieces. Rough edges are undesirable, to say the least.
Yes, it really needed THAT much to make it remotely even. After days of repair, I then had DAYS of sanding to do on the seams to make it flush and even. What I didn't take pictures of was all of the filling that had to be done with syringe. Good lord.
Seriously, that whole mess is a desparity in matching of the part halves.
Did a toddler assemble this?!
Here is where the dry wall repair method came into play.
I cut a piece of firewall material (imagine if cardboard and fiberglass had a baby). Since I couldn't get a hand inside the part to secure it for the duration needed to cure, I went with a tried and true method for dealing with walls. It's beauty is it's simplicity. Cut a small hole in the piece that you need patch the damage, run a piece of twine through it, and secure with tension or a weight! (in my case, that was a staple gun)
The piece in place and curing. A syringe was used to fill all around and near it. When it was done, you could hit it with a hammer without any movement. I made damn sure.
It looks nasty at this point, I know.
The first layer of slurry soaked fiberglass re-enforcement.
I think I did about three layers. At this point I stopped taking pictures because the finish line was in sight.
TADAAAAAAAAAA!
Sanded smooth and flush. You could run a hair across it without catching. Even though it doesn't look it. Since it was going to get a nice slurry finish and then prepped for painting at some point, it wasn't too dire that I went to the lengths that I did... but I did anyway. I prided myself on the smooooothness.
Did it ever make it up in the air? I have no idea. The company lost their funding (it happens when working for super small businesses) and I was out of a job not too long after this. I like to think it is sitting on a kit plane somewhere and soaring through the skies.
But I'll take it being thtown back in someone's shitty shed after they admired how much better it looked.
