October 2, 2007
Spar Caps
Last night I had polished up three of them with one more to go.
The last one had more deep scratches in it than the others.  I also went back over everything with the real fine sanding pad you see in my hand.  Running this pad over everything really polished up the spar caps nicely.  
After doing everything  to make the spar caps airplane worthy, I felt I would Aluma-prep and Alodine the surfaces.  I bought a 4" PVC tube 10' long. Cut the tube down the middle with the bandsaw so I would have two halfs.  Glued them together in the middle (hence the clamp in the middle, the glue was still drying).
Brushing on Aluma-prep.  I know... I should probably be wearing a mask.  It actually did not seem that bad, we had a strong wind today in Kansas so there was a lot of air movement in the garage.
After going through the process... rinsing off the Aluma-prep, blowing it off with air, then letting it dry completely, I got started with the Alodine treatment.
The golden Alodine color.  Very hard to get uniform coverage by just brushing it on.. They would have turned out nicer, cosmetically, by submerging them in the stuff!   Let's just say I did not have enough to perform this task, so I didn't.  I decided after they are all done I will give them a light-medium coat of primer just for good measure.
CHECK out that mask!!  KUDO's FOR ME!!    Anyway.. priming the spar caps.  You cannot see dad that well, he is in a chair behind the bandsaw, he was my spar cap "flip-man" during priming.
The spar caps came out really nice! It only took us (2 people) 12 hours to finish them.  It was a long two days...