Paul Eastham's RV-9A

10/09/2003

6 hours: Countersunk the spars, painstakingly as ever. I am "essentially" ready to prime! Started to set up a spray area outside. Practiced shooting some water with the spray gun. I started to do scratch-removal on the ribs, and spent 2 hours doing 3 ribs. By hand, with sandpaper and scotch-brite pads...now I have a blister on the tip of my finger. Fortunately I stopped and realized I must be doing something wrong if it's taking that long...nobody else even mentions scratch removal on their site, yet the manual essentially says that all scratches must be removed. (The concern is that scratches eventually develop into cracks after years of stress and vibration.) After some more reading, it seems like the cutoff for a scratch that needs fixing is if it catches your fingernail. Hopefully the rest of my ribs will go faster with that in mind, and I can prime tomorrow...

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