sealing iron

[DanielGelinas]

Hello all,

I just bought an arf superclown. I need to reseal the plastic covering. I've never worked with plastic covering before.

The sealing iron I have is 165 watts. I have low, med and hi setting. Anybody know what setting I shoud use?

Also, will a 1200 watt blowdryer work to tighten the covering?

Or, do I need something with a higher temperature setting?

Thanks,
 
-Danny

[Paul Taylor]

Not sure what type of iron you have but I would start on Med and work my way up.

And you will need something hotter then a hair dryer to get the coat tight.

Monokote heat gun works best.

[Clancy Arnold]

Danny
If your sealing iron is longer than the rib spacing, use it bridging between pairs of ribs and move it down the wing one bay at a time.  To help prevent twisting pick one pair of ribs at a time and tighten the covering on each wing panel.  tighten the covering on the same rib pair on all four wings panels.  After the four panels go to the next pair of ribs and repeat.

If you try to tighten all of the covering on one side of a wing half at a time you will not like the end results, Believe me!

A good trick is to look at the trailing edge as you tighten the covering to watch for any twisting of the wing while tightening the covering.   This will be detected by the trailing edge not being centered between the wing high points on both surfaces from root to tip!!!  This is called Wing Warp and is good only on early WW-1 Aircraft not your Stunter!
Clancy

[scott matthews]

Hello Danny                                       
I have been reading alot of good advise here lately and I think that you should do a trick that ultracoat covering material states in there instructions.You should start your iron out at a low temp setting and increase the heat setting until you put a small amount of water on the surface of your iron,when the water boils away your iron is at 212 degrees.Which is the adhesion point for Ultracoat film covering,if your iron is set to high from the start you will shrink the material to its maximum and not be able to fix any imperfections in the future.I asked a similar question recently in painting and finishing forum listed as (ultracoat tips) and got a great lead to iron on coverings called (building the electric T-Rex).Page 2 of this thread will start to walk you thru all you need to do to master covering.
Scott

[DanielGelinas]

Thanks Guys!
I'll try these tricks 
-Danny