stunthanger.com
Building Tips and technical articles. => Building techniques => Topic started by: david beazley on December 23, 2010, 01:55:23 PM
-
Having lost my "dope" privileges in the my basement shop and being too cold outside, has anyone had any success using any other wife friendly products to adhere silkspan? Will water based polyurethane work? Any suggestions or do I have to wait for the spring thaw?
-
Back porch? I've never had problems with dope in cold weather -- but that's 40 degrees 'cold', i.e. Western Oregon temperatures. It'll drop folks from LA in a minute, while folks from the Midwest will just be thinking of rolling their sleeves down.
-
Gotta Garage ?? LL~ LL~ LL~ How about your girlfriends house LL~ LL~ mw~ mw~ Ah just kiddin Mrs.Beazley ... honest I am.
-
HI David,
I know Doug and Steve Moon, and Bradley Walker have used polycrylic to attach silkspan over SLC and to wood structures. I still think you will need "SOME" type of dope/lacquer product to shrink the silkspan tight over open bays.
Merry Christmas!
-
One of the problems with water based urethanes is that it isn't tacky so it really doesn't stick stuff down real well. I've used it to attach paper over sheeted sections and it's fine on flat surfaces, not too good for curves or tips.
Others have used thinned white glue and heat, Stik-it adhesive. Even Carters paper glue was used at least once. However nothing beats dope, as much as I hate using dope there is no real substitute that I have found that I can comfortably live with.
Now plastic covering is a whole different ballgame. Cheaper then dope, faster then dope, shine without real work, and total repairability. it's almost perfect. However I doubt that you will ever get a 20 point award at the nats. But I wonder what would happen if Faye Stilley took a shot at a stunt model and entered it in toledo.
For those that don't know he won the best monokote award more times then anyone else. His coverings are works of art.
dennis
-
Dennis,
I know, I have been flying R/C since the early 80's. I have used plastic on some of my CL ships but I think real CL planes need a traditional finish. I am beginning to like silkspan and dope and working up to try silk/dope on at least one plane. I was hoping that there was some other solution than sleeping on the basement floor for a while! Untill I get my dream garage with paint booth built I guess it is outside for me for a while anyway. Brrr.
-
You can use wall paper paste to attach silk or tissue to your airframe!
Cheers
-
Will any of these alternate methods work with damp or wet silkspan?
-
I covered two open bay wings with minwax water based poly. I just stuck it down with the poly mixed with isopropal alchol , so it would dry quickly. Then repeatedly misted water on silkspan and dried with heat gun. It shrank very tightly. One wing looks good ,the other cracked silkspan around each bay. I think it could be made to work with more experimenting. I don't know what I did differently. to make one crack. FWIW
-
Hi John,
It will be interesting to see how the silkspan holds up under the flexing of the paper in flight. ??? Dope (Lacquer) needs some plasticizers to hold up well. The poly seems like it would be brittle. ???
Big Bear