Burt Rutan cutting foam and Composits

[KEITH McCRARY]

Check out Burt.

[Tom Niebuhr]

Thanks Keith... Very interesting.   

My college room mate worked with Burt at Edwards AFB during flight test of the F15.

[Serge_Krauss]

A young Burt, as we remember him during his homebuilt aircraft days.

[john e. holliday]

Quite a lesson for putting down fiber glass and cutting foam.   Did not know certain foam could be used as sanding it self.

[Fredvon4]

Interesting, watched the whole thing and learned a few tricks

I am ignorant if Rutan ever applied what he knows of composite FG over foam to CF over foam ....I assume yes

I build only profile and have always been intrigued on the different ways to make more rigid to twist... resisting bend is easy... I can see how proper biasing the cloth may help

What I did note was a lot of the composite construction is very labor and product intensive.... I can only imagine the total hours devoted to building one of these man carrying airplanes

Curious also to me was his use of stainless safety wire for the hot wire bow.... I have built a few using various wires and find Iconel or Rene to be better then most wires...my original bow was with Nichrome wire... I have never tried guitar wire or safety wire
 I prefer not to re-watch...does anyone remember and have a a source for the liquid skin barrier... I am starting to have trouble with arthritic hands donning the right sized gloves