I've been putting off making the landing gear leg intersection fairings for awhile, as I hate working with fibreglas. But, they need to be done before I paint, so I finally bit the bullet and started on them.

Yesterday afternoon I masked the area up with 3M 471 vinyl tape, and electrical tape. Then I pulled out some oil based modelling clay that I bought months ago. I pushed it into the initial shape with my hands, then used a large spoon to push it around and smooth it out. I also used the outside edge of some 2" and 3" diameter PVC plumbing couplings to help get smooth, consistent radii in some areas. I spent hours, trying to get a very smooth surface, with curves that flowed smoothly, and were the same on the left and right sides.

Here is a shot of the outside of the right upper landing gear leg area.

This afternoon I did a bunch more fine turning on the clay, trying to get it perfect.

Here is a shot of the leading edge of the right upper landing gear fairing area.

Finally deciding that the clay was perfect, I cut some fibreglas pieces on the diagonal (the fabric will drape around compound curves if the weave is at 45 degrees to the long axis of the piece of fabric). I made a heck of a mess, with fibreglas dripping everywhere - fortunately I had put newspaper over the floor. I was quite dismayed to see that the fibreglas didn't want to smoothly follow the contours along the whole bottom - it tended to sag a bit in some areas. So, all the work to get a perfect surface on the clay was probably a waste of time, as I'm going to end up doing a lot of filling. I'll probably end up laying up some more fibreglas inside the areas where it sagged, and then sand down the outside to get a good contour. Did I tell you how much I hate fibreglas?

I'll give this stuff a couple of days to cure, then break out the Dremel Tool to slit the fairings open along the back edge so I can pull them off.

Left side - freshly laid fibreglas.