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Gull Wing Canopy Inside Glass Skin

Once we have installed all of the foam as described in the last section we are ready to prep for glassing the inside skin. The foam needs to be sanded and all edges need to have a slight taper to them and all corners need to be knocked down. The carbon fiber cloth will have to follow some fairly complex shapes and we want to insure that there are no voids or air bubbles under the layup. Carbon fiber is not clear like fiberglass and we will not be able to see the voids. Let us start off with a photo of the final result. Notice the detail of the inner skin around the hinge brackets. The zone between the door bracket and the frame bracket is not covered with inner skin.

Finished Inner Skin

Before we move on lets review from the last section and insure that our foam is prepared properly. . The following photos show the foam prepped and ready for the inner skin. Review from the last section, the foam must:

The edges have a slight tapered to them, no vertical surfaces
The outside corners have been sanded to have about a 1/8” radius – no sharp corners
All of the inside corners have been filled in with micro, again 1/8” radius – no sharp corners
The outside skin is cleaned and free of micro for the inside skin to bond to.

Micro in the corners form a nice radius

Exposed outer skin for inner skin to bond to

Preping for inner skin

If you are going to use vacuum bagging to apply the inner skin (I did not) you need to apply the inner skin in small, manageable sections and use the technique shown above to seal the ends. Masking tape is applied on the boundary of the area of the layup and this is used as a vacuum seal surface.

Nice radius all around the corner of the canopy door

The inner skin is 3 layer of Carbon Fiber BID. It is best to glass the inside of the canopy in manageable sections that are overlapped. Use peel ply as the top layer (be sure to remove after cure, of course) to insure each layer makes a good bond to the previous one.