Closing the stabilizer end caps^1h

Today I glued the end caps to the horizontal stabilizer fairings.

This is how the cap fits to the fairing.

Since fairings are not dimensionally stable, I had to fix the cap while the fairing was being clecoed to the horizontal stabilizer. To do that, I used a thick CA glue and an accelerator. I put a bead of the glue on the outside perimeter (the one that will be sanded off after caps are epoxied in place) and sprayed it with the accelerator, fixing it in place instantly.

One thing I haven't thought about is if this accelerator contains anything that will affect bonding to the fiberglass. Hopefully, not, but in either case, I will be sanding fairings more and cleaning them with some solvents.

Both caps are temporarily attached.

Then I reinforced the inside of the cap with two more layers of fiber cloth.

Finally, once the epoxy cured, I trimmed the outside and sanded them to get slightly rounded corners. I really like how it turned out, seems like I enjoy working with composites.

There are at least a couple of things I am doing wrong, but hopefully, they won't impact the final quality too much. For example, I don't use peel ply, so probably get a bit too much of the epoxy. Also, epoxy doesn't stick well to the glass surface, so I need to sand it every time. Another thing is that I might be getting some contaminants in the mix. Not sure how much that matters for small pieces like these.