Right top hats were like the left. I did all the prep in one day and the the layup of the tapes in 6 hours the next day.

I got everything sitting down where it should. Easier with LESS cuts as it turns out.

This time I did the tape layups in two sections. A-C and then later D-F. On the previous strake things were starting to go off when doing it all at once. I just measured what was needed and labeled a pic of the strakes for reference. Then as you see I had the 3″ wide tapes also labeled before I cut them out with scissors.

No need for too many pics, it was like the other side. Lots of tapes after floxing the joins.

In case this process makes no sense I will attempt to explain with a little test piece.

The job is to make a hat top on our curved piece that fits the rib perfectly. The underside of the top is glassed, the rib is the finished piece installed in the plane. As we are popping the top off later we need some release tape on the top. That’s the grey stuff.

Then we want the top and the rib to match perfectly. This is the trick. I just put a LOT of flox in the 90 degree join area. This takes up the slack space and gives the glass a nice filleted curve to lay into.

Next up a couple of plies of BID to join the top and rib side.

After cure the top comes off, no problem. The grey tape does its job as a release agent.

Can you see how bumpy the bottom part of the top is. Doesn’t matter because the flox takes up the space. Its hard to see but assume you see a perfect match.

Later you can route into the join down to the glass. Then its ready to be floxed on. If you route into the rib a little you are making a sort of flox corner. Glass to glass everywhere rib sides to top connected with the flox. You also get the rib well sealed and of course the main point is that when you glass/flox the top on it isn’t going to leak because you are glassing it over a wide area – the ‘hat tops’. This cheesy example is just on one side of course. Most of the ribs look like they have a T section on top.

I hope this and tomorrows pics of the hat tops (9th May 18) are some help.