Finished and installed fiberglass flaperons. Nice, but I wouldn't do it again.

[cowlove 33]

Finished installing fiberglass flaperons for the Catalina.  Clark-Y foam cores cut by Eureka CNC, 2 layers 6oz cloth, flox hardpoints for hinge bracket bolts.   Exceeds the strength of the original design in several arbitrary destructive tests. 

Would not recommend.  Cost, labor and time was ridiculous compared to the weight savings.  
 

Also, in hindsight, I think it's a little too fine a shape to easily work in fiberglass.   As ugly and unsatisfying as reworking the original sloppily-built aluminum would have been, that was probably the better choice.  

[cowlove 33]

...also visible: wing skin patches from surgery to reinforce the rib tail flaperon attach points.  

[akflyer 1427]

Well its looking good and one step closer to getting back in the air!  What do you have in it for power?

 

[marksires 484]

May have been a lot of time and effort, but at least you don't have to worry about corrosion on it now.  On a seaplane, that's worth something.

Mark

[cowlove 33]

Home-rebuilt 582 grey head with no updates, C gearbox, RK400 clutch, 70" 3-blade warp drive.   Just looking at the numbers, I thought it would take just the right touch to get it off the water.   However, I took it out for some step taxi work to check the flaperon rigging, and had an accidental 4.6 second flight.  It took right off at about 5300RPM(!)

[akflyer 1427]

NICE!  damn, this may push me over the edge to go round up Bobs amphib and drag it home...