Dharma Trading.

[WLGeorge]

I ordered three yards of 5mm silk from Dharma Trading co. and it was here in four days.  A really good place to order from!!!!!My wife, who is the in house expert on all things Asian and silk related pronounced it excellent silk and promptly confiscated it as "you no need this, too good for airplane."  I haven't seen it since.  As I totally rely on her as my personal tour guide service when we are in China ( her home country) I decided to reorder and try to catch the mail before she confiscates the next batch.  I hate to complain too much as she is a pretty good control line airplane release person and can do a better monocote job than I can. As for the silk it is just one of the trials of being a model builder.  Any of you folks have problems like this or am I the only one?

[Howard Rush]

I do.  You never know quite what they're cookin' inside those silky sleeves.

[Lyle Spiegel]

Would be wonderful if they could be convinced to offer some with checkerboard pattern! Back in the day I always used ESaki brand checkerboard. They now only well it as jap tissue for rubber. I have sent them an email in past asking for checkerboard in silk. I got polite reply that they would consider it of enough people wrote and made a request.

[Bill Morell]

Would be wonderful if they could be convinced to offer some with checkerboard pattern! Back in the day I always used ESaki brand checkerboard. They now only well it as jap tissue for rubber. I have sent them an email in past asking for checkerboard in silk. I got polite reply that they would consider it of enough people wrote and made a request.

Every time I have asked them they have flat out stated "no way" and believe me I have asked several times. I got lucky and got several yards off eBay for a much better price than you see on there normally.

[Howard Rush]

Would be wonderful if they could be convinced to offer some with checkerboard pattern! Back in the day I always used ESaki brand checkerboard. They now only well it as jap tissue for rubber. I have sent them an email in past asking for checkerboard in silk. I got polite reply that they would consider it of enough people wrote and made a request.

Cool.  It takes a real modeler to cover with checkerboard silk and have the checks come out straight.

[WLGeorge]

I have not covered one in silk in about 40 years but I think if I can sneak some silk past the in house expert I am going to give it a whirl.  I don't remember the checkerboard silk at all.  I do remember an Uncle painstakingly  hand painting some on a Thunderbird.  I didn't think he was ever going to get through with it.  I have seen some amazing dye jobs done on silk in   the  Peoples Republic of China..  I  saw a dragon done that took my breath away but so did the price.  I wonder if it could be dyed using the old silk screening method?

[James D. Hayes]

WLGeorge,

      Just curious which type of silk and weave you ordered from them. I just went on the website and checked it out.



      Jim Hayes

[WLGeorge]

Mr. Hayes  I ordered the 5mm Habotai silk.  It is very a very sheer see through material (think Honeymoon nightie, sorry but that's what it looks like to me).  My flying partner who is in his 80's says I should have gotten the 8 mm stuff.  Says the 5 mm takes too much dope to fill.  We will find out.  I have had zero experience with silk since about 1965 or so. I am no expert by any standard.  Look in the painting section and there is a wealth of information there.  My wife was really impressed by the silk we received  from Dharma Trading and she is from that area of the world. She looked it over very carefully and pronounced it too good for the airplane.  There were no imperfections in the three yards I purchased.  I did go to the local dress shop and looked at the dress liner that I read about on this site.  Looked very heavy to me.  It will be a few weeks before I am ready to cover my project but I am going to play with a bit of  this silk and experiment with it.

[Howard Rush]

After I made the Stones quote the popups about the Asian girls increased.  Those ad guys are pretty clever.

[Michael Massey]

I have ordered from Dharma and Thai silks.  Great results from both.

I have used 5mm and 8mm.  True the 5mm takes longer to fill with dope but I think there is a trade off with how well the 8mm shrinks back up with the first dope coat vs the 5mm.  It seems to me the 5mm shrinks up a bit quicker, for me about 3 to 4 coats of thick dope.  I also experimented with the "grain" direction when applying silk.  Conventional wisdom says grain wing tip to wing tip.  That works fine.  When applied the other direction, I get very small "tension wrinkles" along the L/E and T/E planking that takes a few more coats to pull tight.  But it eventually does so no real disaster in the making.

Silk is hard to work with but the results are great and certainly worth the extra effort in my mind.  Also very strong and never gets those pesky volunteer holes like I have experienced with silk span (when it was available).

Good luck with it.  Once mastered, you will be very happy with it.

[WLGeorge]

"

[WLGeorge]

I made up some small squares to experiment with and the 5mm seems to tighten up rather well.  I also intentionally left two squares rather loose and saggy and then attempted to heat shrink them.  To my surprise silk will heat shrink but not like monocoat.  It also shrinks a little better when dampened  before heating.. The silk now has two coats on it .  The heat shrunk stuff does not appear to be tightening up as well but it wasn't pulled as tight to begin with.  I was just doing this to get it straight in my mind on how to proceed.  The covering job itself is still several weeks away.

[KenP51]

 The covering job itself is still several weeks away.

Well please keep us updated when you get to that point.

I have used the dress liner material before. I think it did have a weight penalty. Look at my Avatar.

I used silek back in the late 60's early 70's. I really liked it.
I remember the checkered silk. I used it on a small biplane. ONCE. It was tough to get just right. But nice.

Thanks for posting about your experience with Dharma Trading co. I have had them bookmarked for some time now.

Ken