I decided to do some fill and fair on the canard. I wanted the canard at least semi finished so when I install it the templates will be able to be positioned repeatably on the surfaces. Here is a pic of the bottom of the canard prepped and ready for some micro.
To prep the canard I gave it a sand with regular sand paper to give it a light scuff. I then made a pad by gluing some red scotch brite to a sanding disk using spray adhesive. The scotch brite is used to get down in the low spots in the weave of the cloth. Having it on an orbital sander makes it quick to scuff the surface without damaging any fibers.
I mixed up some micro for the fill. I used a paint mixer on a drill to mix in the micro. It does a thorough job of mixing it and takes the elbow grease out of the equation.
I didn’t take any pictures of the process only captured the end result. What I did was use the contour templates as a screed to shape the fill. I used thicker micro first which will fill any major discrepancies then use thinner micro to smooth the surface. It is done one after another in the same cure. This will only work if you have enough contact points on the contour template to the surface of the canard.
Here is a pic taken the next day with the contour template on the surface. Its not bad for the first fill and no sanding.
I gave the bottom fill a quick sand and checked to make sure it is straight.
Now on to the top of the canard. In this pic you can see the difference between not sanded and sanded with the scotch brite on the orbital sander.
The top of the canard is all prepped and ready to be filled.
I glued a small tab onto the top contour template to act as a guide on the trailing edge of the canard.
The micro is applied to the surface.
You can see that the thicker micro does not give a nice finish but it fills the bulk of the shape.
And here is a pic of the finish after the thinner micro is applied.
The next day I gave the top surface a quick sand. It is much nicer doing only fifteen minutes of easy sanding to get it to this stage.
Canadian long-ez 