Chapter 5

In this chapter I will make the sides of the fuselage.

The sides are built using jigs to create the right curvature. The jigs are made of wood-blocks and a sheet of 3mm masonite. The first thing to do is to glue together the
sheets of masonite and the foam, since the table will be occupied for the rest of this chapter. I will not have the space available to this later, so off to work:

After cure some extra stiffeners are glued onto the longerons. These are glued in place using flox. The longest stiffener has to follow the curvature of the longeron, so to
be able to bend them I had to saw some cuts in the stiffener so it could be bent. These stiffeners are held in place by nails into the longeron itself. I pre-drilled each hole
to avoid the wood to crack. This part was fun to do, as I enjoy to work with wood!

Jigs
The jigs are made of 1" x 8" pine. I measured up the different jigs according to the plan and cut them out using my jig-saw. Piece of cake...

Longerons
The longerons are made of laminated wood. The plans call out for sitka spruce. This is not available in Norway, at least not without much hazzle, so I ended up using
top quality lists/mouldings of pine, free from knots. I trimmed them to the right dimensions using my beloved (!) deWalt-saw. Then I mounted some of the jigs to the
table according to plan, and layed some saran-wrap on top of the jigs and table to avoid gluing the longerons to the table or the jigs. The longerons are made of 3
pieces of pine each glued together (laminated) with pure epoxy. Then we use nails to press them against the jigs.

However I managed to glue the stiffener in front of the 5" mark I draw... That could lead to a terrible job later on, so thanks to the fact that I started to investigate
something I found in the FAQ, I luckily found this and managed to correct it before it was to late.
In the Cozy-FAQ it says: Change the 5.9" dimension to 6.25". The reason for this change, and the place where this change takes place, is where the F28-bulkhead is
attached to the sides. The text says later on in chapter 6 that F28 should be glued 5.9" from the front. This makes it difficult to get room for the canard, so we are advised to
move F28 to 6.25" instead of 5.9". However - this happens in chapter 6, there is no place in chapter 5 the position 5.9" is mentioned. The closest thing I found was an advice
from a builder to glue the stiffener (or doubler as it says) at position 5.5" instead of 5.0". Checking the full-size plans this makes sense:

Preparing the sides
Next thing to do is erecting the jigs to make them support the masonite and the fuselage-foam. I draw lines on my table according to plans, and bondoed the jigs in place.
Then I cut some spacers 7/8 inch wide that I placed between the two masonite-sheets to assure I got the correct distance between them. The masonite is nailed to the jigs.
Then the foam is placed ontop of the masonite, fastened with some blobs of 5-min epoxy and weighed down for cure. It's important to be accurate here, to make it easier to
assemble the fuselage with the correct angles later on. The clue is to measure, measure and measure again.

Spacers
The sides are to have a hollowed-out shape inside. This is achieved by making spacers gluing them around the edge of the sides. Per plan I was to use Clark Foam or
Last-a-foam (LAF). I have substituted all this foam with Divinycell H80 since LAF is unavailable in Norway. I have also read some builder-logs that say that LAF is very brittle
like urethane-foam and they would rather switch to Divinycell if they were to build over. Well - I used Divinycell and made the spacers as per plans. The hardest part was to
make the angle on the spacers. Divinycell is rather stiff and tough to work with. After spending an hour testing out different ways to cut the angles - without success - I
ended up using my hack-saw after I angled the blade 90 degrees. Then it was very easy to make the correct angle. I sawed them almost to the correct angle and used my
Bosch multimaster with the delta-sander attached. Using a 60-grit-paper it was easy and quick to sand the spacers to the right shape. The last thing to do was to glue them
to the sides using rather thick micro. The plans says just to "micro them in place" without saying what kind of micro to use. I made the micro so thick that it was still flowing,
but just flowing slow. The spacers was secured to the foam with thin nails. To be able to follow the curvature I just used some more nails where I had to bend the spacers.
No big deal at all.

Fuel-gauges
According to the plans I have to make two depressions in each side. One to make more room for the hand that moves the control-stick, and one depression to fit the
manual fuel-gauges (sight-glasses). I have decided to make a modification to the strakes (CozyGirrrls-strakes). That mod gives the control-stick-hand much more room so
a depression here is not neccessary. I am going to use electronic gauges connected to the EFIS, but decided to have these as backups. I ordered them from Vance
Atkinson. I didn't quite understand how to mount these so I had to study several builder-sites as well as I was in contact with a fellow Cozy-builder (and Cozy-flyer!) in
South Africa by the name of Chris Van Hoof. The plans called out for sanding the depression, but I decided to use my router to make the depressions. The plans says that if
I use these gauges the depression should be flat in the bottom, and .2" / 5mm foam left. The plans are somewhat unclear in this process, but after talking to the guys I will
make the depressions, then use peel-ply in the bottom before I glass over. The gauges will not be mounted until chapter 21 (strakes) to ensure that the position is
absolutely correct. This approach makes working with the tub a bit easier as well since I don't need to pay attention to these gauges and possibly break them. Here are
some pictures of the process:

Glassing the sides
Now we are on for the biggest layup yet - glassing the sides. The plans state that this job should take 3-4 hours. I've read several logs stating that someone used
up to 11 hours on this job. This was however working alone, the plans recommends having a helper here since placing the cloth is difficult to do alone. My wife
stepped forward as a volunteer and she did a great job. She is now officially a Cozy-builder as well! At the end of the job we had used 4 hours and 15 minutes. Not
bad!
I prepared this stage the day before by measuring and cutting the glass, and rounding the sides of the longerons that later are to be covered with UNI. I also filled
the epoxy-dispenser up with both hardener and resin to avoid having to do this in the middle of the job.

Both sides are glassed at the same time. It was a bit tricky to get the cloth to lay perfectly in all the curves and not to mention the depression for the fuel gauge.
A lot of squeeging and stippeling with the brush. I drew two lines at 30° of each other to help guiding us when we placed the cloth. We worked simultaneously on
both sides making the job go twice as fast!

The longerons are clamped against the spacers and weighed down against the sides. As usual I peel-ply everything. If I was to do this again I would have used
Wayne Hicks method of using dry-wall-screws from the underside fastening the longerons. My weights was not enough to weighten down the longerons enough
making some pockets of air. I discovered this when I removed the weights and the peel-ply. I mixed up some more wet flox and put it in a plastic-bag cutting
off a small part of the corner. Then I squeezed flox into the pockets the same way I would decorate a cake. When I'm finished and have loosened the sides
from the jigs I will then pour pure epoxy into the pockets from the top to ensure I have bonding all the way.

Glassing the upper longerons with 4 plies of UNI lengthwise. This involves cutting strips of UNI that gives many loose threads when handling. I read a tip on the
net that I followed with great success. It's as easy as to put some tape on the edges and cut through the tape. Then it's easy to position the ply and just use the
scissors to trim of the edge with the tape. No loose threads!

Another trick I used from a builders site. To clamp the triangular longeron is not possible without a support. I decided not to use nails as suggested
in the plans. Instead I used 11 clamps on each side. I made some small supports with a triangular cutout that matched the longeron. In this way the
clamp sits tight and the longeron is firmly pressed down to the fuselage.

An extra triangular stiffener (20" long) is floxed ontop of the triangular longeron to make a square longeron aft. This is done because this part will
be filled with foam later, and then glassed. As pr plans I made the electrical duct by making a plug from urethane and cover it with 1 ply of BID.
This is glued ontop of the carved-out channel. The stringers LWX and LWY are floxed in place. Some strips with BID is then epoxyed to them to
secure them I guess. As the plans says - this chapter consists of many small tasks that have to cure in between.

Now I could pop the sides loose from the jig. It resulted in some dents and holes in the foams backside due to the blobs of
epoxy used to glue the foam to the masonite. I just filled all the dents with dry micro, let it cure and then sanded them flush
with the foam. No big deal.

Then I trimmed off the front part perpendicular to the upper longeron, and measured 101.75" to the back using a long stick.
It's important not to follow the curvature when measuring, but measure the straight line. And before you cut the front
part - measure to assure that you actually have 101.75" to the back. I nearly goofed up here!

The last thing to do was to cut out the space for the center-spar.

That was the end of chapter 5. Didn't take so much time really, but it was as stated in the plans many small jobs with lots of
waiting in between for the epoxy to dry.