Chris
Beautiful planes ....
..... thats 56.4 oz ..... what does it weigh with the motor and pipe? ..........
.................................... Oh my that IS with powertrain .... I'm definitely doing something wrong.
is the covering Jap tissue or polyspan? All dope? where do you hide the helium bags?
Frank,
Its covered in Brodak Silkspan. In wood ready to cover it weighed 22.5 oz and the take apart weighed 25 oz. I really spent a lot of time gathering the right wood for the two planes. I have been ordering a LOT of balsa for the P-47 kits and have been weighing every piece I get in and have been keeping the really good wood for myself... Every kit gets good contest wood but I kept a lot of the 4lb and the type of grain I needed. I think the wood selection had a lot to do with the weight turnout.
The finishing process is as follows...
1. Sand with 320 sandpaper.
2. Z-poxy the entire plane... Every surface that dope will touch.... Wait 20 minutes then wipe off as much as possible. It leaves a thin layer that seals the contest balsa (dope doesn't sink in) and adds very little weight. When dries sand with 320. Just enough to get fuzzes from paper towels off.
3. 2 coats of b. dope.
4. light sand with 320
5. 1 more coat of brushed on dope
6. light Brodak tissue on wings and polyspan on tips. It shrinks better with this type of wing tip. Next time I will probably do solid tips which I will cover with carbon veil. Carbon Veil on the fuse.
7. Brush 1 coat of clear on everything. Sand with 400
8. Brush 3 coats of clear on everything with heavy amount of aero filler. Sand with 400 grit
9. Brush coat the open bays with 2-3 more times with aero saturated dope to fill the pinholes in the silkspan. As you get down to a few holes per bay you can just drop a bit of dope on the holes to fill. Light sand again with 320.
10. Spray primer using DC540. I do the first coat only on the solid surfaces. Not on the bays. I sand it almost all off with 400. Focus on the areas that need more work and make the fillets with super fill. Sand and spray DC-540 until perfect or as close to perfect.
11. Spray entire plane with light coat of DC-540. Sand with 600. I wet sand once I start using DC540. Have done it both ways but like wet sanding a little better.
12. Once satisfied with the foundation mask and spray color. All Randolph & Brodak dope
13. Once I get that done I spray a few coats of clear with the touchup gun over the paint lines so I can blend them together. Then light sand with 600 or 1200 depending on my patience.
14. Ink the plane. I clear a panel or area with a dust coat of clear dope so I can seal the ink.
15. Clean the entire airplane multiple times and spray a light coat of Urethane. I used a dupont product my flying budding Mark Mickiney gave me. Normally I just spray the nose but I decided to try the whole plane. It gained 1.8 oz from the Urethane. I think that is lighter than what I normally do with Clear dope and its better looking. The take apart only has urethane on the nose and 6ish coats of clear dope and it gained 3 oz in clear. That surprised me. Though I think I should have put more Urethane on it since I buffed through in about 10 places. I repaired most of them but still need to go back and fix a few. I figure I will bump it a few times and need to repair those issue before the NATS so I might as well wait until then and do them all at once.
The two planes came out at 56.4 and 58.5 oz. But the take apart needed over 1 oz of nose weight to trim it out while the one piece balanced out right and doesn't need nose weight. I have a KAZ carbon tank in both... I know pointless in the takeaprt but that is a VERY light tank and worked out in the one piece.
Sorry for the long winded response Frank but you asked....
-Chris
Topic: Twin Junar XL's are done! (Read 12145 times)