I’ve had people asking me, “Where’s Chad?? We miss him! Is he going to come out of hibernation soon?”

Well, Chad was involved in quite a little happening in the small village that we have in the basement. The townspeople were minding their own business when out of nowhere this Spad fuselage just landed smack-dab in the middle of town! The funny thing is that the wing saddle fell clear on the other side of town where the grass runway strip is going to go! It was chaos for quite a while.

You don’t believe me? Okay, fine… the boring story is that Chad was placed out of harm’s way while Jay worked on other projects. If you look closely in the background you can see him just hanging out:

Can you spot him? This was before he was actually placed on top of the train layout so that I wouldn’t trip over him. Poor Chad!

Now that Christmas is over and the majority of Jay’s projects are done he decided to turn his attention back to Chad.

I went downstairs and found that Chad’s parts were scattered about!

I looked over and saw this on the workbench:

Oooo! Chad is getting a silk suit made for him!

Nope. He’s getting his skin glued on! Chad is being glassed! I said gLassed… not gassed. After all, he’s electric! I think that he can even do the electric slide. He’s quite talented, you know.

So Chad’s parts were laying there, all covered in a filmy piece of fiberglass when the smoothing gel (aka Epoxy) was drizzled onto him.

Instead of the rose-scented gel like what I get when I get a pedicure this was just plain ol’ epoxy scent. I guess that Spad’s don’t want to smell like roses when they are dropping bombs. Who knew!

Then you want to make sure that you really rub the goo in really good. Don’t miss any spots because then everything will just feel a little off. You should have already exfoliated before you got to this step so that you don’t run across any rough patches.

This is also a really good time to use the gift cards that you get and know that you’re not ever going to use. “Gee, Aunt Sally, thanks for getting me the $15 gift card to The House of Gluten. I can’t wait to use it…*cough**cough*” Or, if you receive annoying ads in the mail that are plastic-like they work great, too. I think that most of ours come from the jewelry stores so in a few weeks you should be getting a fresh supply delivered to your house.

Once you have smoothed it all out you then get to let it cure. The oven helps with this, too. Pre-heat it to 350 degrees and then bake for 10-12 minutes or until the edges start to become golden brown. Wait, no… that’s not right. That’s part of the directions for chocolate chip cookies. I do know that Jay has been teasing about using my oven for curing. I’ve been working a lot of overtime so I guess that what I don’t know won’t hurt me.

Doesn’t this tail look kind of like a spanish lady with a scarf around her head? I can hear her singing now… she has such a rich voice. Beautiful.

The other thing that Jay worked on was the cockpit.

There it is. Yep. Not exciting, but at least now it’s trimmed nicely.

That’s all I’ve got for now. As the glassing continues I might take a few more pictures, but really… if you’ve seen glassing once then you’ve seen it plenty. Although let me throw in a little brag here: Jay used to make his own fiberglass fan housing units and he showed me how to do it once. Apparently I did a really fantastic job. I did such a good job that he lost all desire to make any more. Some people just don’t like competition. 🙂

Until next time…