Well it is the middle of the winter and the Bocian is ready to cover. Normally I like to put a real fabric finish on a wood sailplane. My Orlik and Pirat are both KlassKote over Nitrate on Koverall. Not a chance of using dope in the middle of the winter. The last two covering jobs were really nice weeks around September that were warm and dry and low humidity.
One of my local club members just recovered his Citabria, 1:1 scale. He used Stewart Systems for the covering. It is all water based so the smell factor is way down. I picked up the end of the bottle of EkoBond he had so I am going to do some sample pieces to see how it works out. I will stick with Koverall and I want to finish it up with KlassKote. I already have the can of paint for HA-3433. The only question is what to use to apply the fabric and seal the fabric.
I covered the trim tab on the Bocian first. Nice little surface with enough challenges for how things wrapped around. I also have a flat piece of ply with a square hole in it to see how things work around spoiler cutouts and servo openings. So far, the results seem good for just doing the covering.
Using it for applying the fabric is a little bit different. You apply the EkoBond around the edge where you want to attach the fabric. Then you let it dry. It is tacky enough when dry that you can press the fabric into the film of EkoBond applied to the edge. A little ironing around 200F sticks it a little better. The odd in the covering steps is that after you trim the edge and stick it down, you have one more step. Brush some more EkoBond over that edge and then wipe it off almost immediately so that only the EkoBond that penetrated the fabric remains. If you put too much on and leave it dry it remains rubbery and that junk is going to show in the finish.
On the second side, you want to apply EkoBond on the edge and up tyo wherever you want your overlap to finish up. The nice part is you can work the fabric in place around the edges and round pieces and then mark where your trim line will be. Then you can pull off the edge so you can do the trimming. After that stick it back down, and iron the edge. Finally, brush on and wipe off over the edge with some more EkoBond.
The only negative so far is you can't use it if you want a clear finish since you get the tint from the glue. The nice part is you know if you missed gluing anything.![Click image for larger version
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One of my local club members just recovered his Citabria, 1:1 scale. He used Stewart Systems for the covering. It is all water based so the smell factor is way down. I picked up the end of the bottle of EkoBond he had so I am going to do some sample pieces to see how it works out. I will stick with Koverall and I want to finish it up with KlassKote. I already have the can of paint for HA-3433. The only question is what to use to apply the fabric and seal the fabric.
I covered the trim tab on the Bocian first. Nice little surface with enough challenges for how things wrapped around. I also have a flat piece of ply with a square hole in it to see how things work around spoiler cutouts and servo openings. So far, the results seem good for just doing the covering.
Using it for applying the fabric is a little bit different. You apply the EkoBond around the edge where you want to attach the fabric. Then you let it dry. It is tacky enough when dry that you can press the fabric into the film of EkoBond applied to the edge. A little ironing around 200F sticks it a little better. The odd in the covering steps is that after you trim the edge and stick it down, you have one more step. Brush some more EkoBond over that edge and then wipe it off almost immediately so that only the EkoBond that penetrated the fabric remains. If you put too much on and leave it dry it remains rubbery and that junk is going to show in the finish.
On the second side, you want to apply EkoBond on the edge and up tyo wherever you want your overlap to finish up. The nice part is you can work the fabric in place around the edges and round pieces and then mark where your trim line will be. Then you can pull off the edge so you can do the trimming. After that stick it back down, and iron the edge. Finally, brush on and wipe off over the edge with some more EkoBond.
The only negative so far is you can't use it if you want a clear finish since you get the tint from the glue. The nice part is you know if you missed gluing anything.
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