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Building Tips and technical articles. => Building techniques => Topic started by: John KruziK on November 28, 2009, 06:49:08 AM
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I have a Sig Mustang stunter that I'm refinishing. After removing plastic covering I found 1 wing panels sheating is loose. Should I just cut out section and re glue or is there something else that can be done? Thanks John
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I also have an old Genisis foam wing that was sheeted but never used and one day I plan to build an airplane around it. The sheeting on the leading edge has separated and I've spent the last couple years thinking off and on of ways to fix it without destroying the wing.
Think what I'm going to do is load up a hypo with foam friendly CA and just give it shots, hopfully between the sheeting and foam. Even bought the CA a couple of times and ended up using it for other stuff before I was able to try my idea. One thing that has stopped me is I don't have the blanks that came out of the cores to insert back in to be sure I'm not gluing something out of shape.
If anyone comes up with a better plan I'm listening...
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How about shooting in some polyurethane glue--it should expand some.
Drill or punch some small holes over the loose area, and squeeze a little in. Leave the hole open so if you put in too much it can escape. May not be a bad idea to put on some plastic saran wrap so that any that escapes mainly goes onto the plastic.
I think you would want to weight down the wing with some magazines or other pliable material (sack of rice for example). Of course you don't want to glue these to the wing, so leave a gap or something around the holes.
Just a guess, haven't done it myself in this type of problem.
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Yea, the best bet is to inject epoxy under the covering. If you have cradles hanging around somewhere, You could cut them to fit and once the epoxy is in, set the wing in the cradles and weight it down.
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John,
How did you attach the skins, when you built the Mustang? I think that would have some bearing on what to repair with.
Bill
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I didn't build it originally, but I cut off all plastic pieces and formed new balsa parts. Lots of sanding, and I ended up re adhering sheating with epoxy. I just cut along the grain, pried up the loose spot and smoshed some epoxy into gap. Then supported wing with foam block, placed a piece of hard wood on top of seam with several weights on top of that.(I Did have waxpaper on wing) Worked great, no lumps or bumps. Thanks to all who responded
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Yes "smoshed" is a techy term for a large area, I would have "smooshed" if it was a smaller space. Thanks
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I have had to do that on one of my large R/C airplanes. I used a sharpened brass tube to cut out a plug in the loose sheeting. Inserted some poly glue in the void (not too much) and weighted the skin down. After it set, I replaced the plug and finished over it. It looked ok. I suppose if it were real loose or a large area you could slit the skin and rejoin so it would lay flat.
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Gorilla glue, the white stuff, I use it to fix combat planes all the time. Get a hypodermic needle and use it to inject the glue into the spots where the sheeting is lose.