First up for today was to unwrap yesterday's layup. Looks pretty good.

Some trimming had most of the excess removed.

Unfortunately, it appears some of my outer aluminum pieces didn't fit tightly enough around the existing flange, so some raw epoxy built up here. I'll have to remove this somehow. Sandpaper doesn't seem like it'll do a precise enough job.

I decided to use a file. I ground a "safe edge" on the file by removing the teeth along that edge. This smooth safe edge should facilitate filing a nice, sharp corner, without much risk of filing away my the edge of the recent layers.

Here you can see how the safe edge references the existing edge while I file away the excess epoxy.

After quite a bit of filing and sanding, the lid was looking pretty good.

Once removed from the mold, you can see the groove which will accept the flange of a piano hinge.

I test fitted a scrap piece of piano hinge in the slot. Nice fit. As planned, I need to sand away 1/8" of these flanges. The slot is 5/8" deep (i.e. half of the full hinge width: 1 1/4"), but the flange of the hinge is only 1/2" wide. Removing 1/8" from this part and 1/8" from the top edge of the arm rest compartment will accomodate the eyes of the hinge.

After this, I prepped some fiberglass to wrap the little foam wedge I made yesterday.

I needed some thumb tacks to hold the fiberglass to the foam once I wrapped it, but all the ones we had on hand had tall, plastic heads. I needed some of the flat headed ones. My neighbor, Jason, gave me some that he had. I sprayed them with mold release.

Time to wrap the foam up.

I almost forgot to brush on some raw epoxy onto the foam. Here it is after wrapping three times around the foam.

I cut tabs and folded the ends over and secured the fiberglass with more thumb tacks.

After wrapping with peel ply and felt, I vacuum bagged the layup using the same bag from yesterday. It doesn't seem to have any leaks.

Back to working on the lid. I fashioned this little marking gauge to create a cut line 1/2" offset from the bottom of the slot.

After cutting, filing, and sanding that material away, I test fit the hinge again. Looks good!