While waiting to see if my epoxy will still cure properly, I drilled a bunch of #30 holes in between the existing rivet holes in the metal side flanges. When I later bond and rivet these parts to the lower cowl, the holes will help the epoxy get a good grip.
My epoxy turned out to still be good, so it's time for what will probably turn into several weeks of glass work. The first thing I want to do is build up some flanges on the inside of the lower cowl, at the outboard corners. Eventually these will be used for a single screw and nutplate per side, similar to this example. First I applied clear packing tape to the areas where I didn't want the epoxy to stick, and clecoed the two halves of the cowl together on the bench:
I laid up five plies of cloth from my box of scraps and stuck it to the inside of the cowl, after first cleaning the area of interest and wiping it down with epoxy.
This is how it looked after it cured, immediately after removing the top cowl:
I should be able to work with this. It needs to be cleaned up and trimmed/sanded to shape, of course. Then a bit of flox on the front to ensure a good fit, a few more plies on the back if it needs stiffening, and I'll have my flanges.
