Turtle Deck

The turtledeck was made from the Dow blue extruded polystyrene. Rich Parker stopped by today and suggested that I put in a "strong back" support on the centerline of the fuselage. Which I did. There are full vertical cross supports right behind the canopy and mid way down the turtledecks length. The pieces were fitted using a sharp knife and a sureform file. Make sure the wedges fit pretty well as you do not want more than 1/8" gap to be filled in with the spray can foam

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All the pieces were glued together with spray can foam. Everything was held together with 3" long drywall screws. (Don't forget to remove the screws before you start sanding to shape) The fuselage was protected with a layer of duct tape. I used a belt sander with 36 grit sandpaper to rough form the deck. Then switched to the sureform file again. My smartlevel was used to make the angles the same. I then switched to a 2x4 with some 50 grit paper to smooth everything out. A palm sander came next with 100 grit paper.

Micro was applied to fill the small gouges in the foam. Two layers of the 7.5 oz fiberglass cloth were put on. The canopy and turtle deck were glassed at the same time. With two extra layers of cloth at the rear of the canopy. A third layer of glass was applied to the canopy frame.

It's starting to look a lot like an airplane now.