[b0Bro's dad]

I had some spare time this afternoon so I fitted the engine cooling baffles. I removed the top half of the cowling and used some old CoreCell to cut a template of the base. When I was happy with this, I cut the baffle from 3mm light ply with the bandsaw and finished it to size with the face sander. I needed to cut the ply in half to fit it under the engine (ply not as flexible as CoreCell). I painted the inside of each half with black heatproof paint before tack fitting the main baffle with super glue.

At this point, I removed the cowling from the aircraft and joined the two sections back together. Working from the back, I used more CoreCell to make templates of the vertical (side) baffles. When I was happy with the shape, I cut these also from 3mm light ply. Before I painted the side baffles, I cut a 3mm rebate along the top and shaped to the angle of the top cowling. When the paint was dry, I superglued a 3mm foam strip into the rebate on the top edge and tack glued in the sides (glue only on the bottom half of the cowling). I finshed up by using a thick epoxy/micro-balloons paste to properly glue all the seams and set it aside to dry.

One less job to do!