Covering the fuselage has been going pretty well. It’s time consuming, but it’s nothing crazy.
I’ve been working on and off throughout the past week to try and keep making steady progress. As of tonight, all the sides of the fuselage are now attached. The right side needs to have the initial shrink done and then all sides can be shrunk to 350 degrees.
I’ve learned a few things through covering the fuselage and using Stewart Systems. I’ve had a few cases where the fabric would come un tacked when I would brush glue down through the top of the fabric in an area that I had previously tacked down with the iron per Stewart Systems procedure. I think the issue is that my iron wasn’t hot enough or I didn’t have enough glue underneath the fabric for it it really adhere. This didn’t cause big problems, but I did have to pull the fabric and then tack it down again after the glue had dried. If anyone is confused, shoot me a message/email and I can go through it in more detail.
The next part that took some learning and I still don’t feel great about doing is the transition from the top center former and the vertical stabilizer. So the procedure I used seemed to work ok. To preface this, I followed the same sequence as in the RANS manual. I attached the fabric to the bottom longeron completely and then started tacking the fabric into place around the cabin and working my way towards the baggage compartment. I then attached the fabric around the vertical stabilizer. This let me get everything in place and then trim all the excess fabric off with some degree of certainty that I had enough everywhere. Then I started working on tacking down the fabric onto the top center former working towards the transition. What I found was that I did need to slit the fabric around the radius area, but I didn’t have to cut all the way to the tube to get the transition to lay down. It still took a lot of work and I’m not completely happy with the amount of wrinkles I have, but I think it will look better after the final shrink. Overall, it worked out pretty well and I ended up with good coverage over the vertical stabilizer tube in that area.
The other interesting part it the baggage compartment. I also followed RANS here as well. I got all the fabric for the side in question fully glues down and all the wrinkles out of the bonded area. I then applied some glue the inside of the baggage window area so the fabric wouldn’t fray when I cut. Of course enough fabric must be left to wrap to the inside of the baggage window frame and glued down. This worked out pretty well and the fabric played down on the window frame quite nicely during the initial shrink.
I have some decent wrinkles, but I’m planning on them being taking care of during the shrink. I didn’t shrink at 250 degrees on the left side because I was concerned with pulling the top center former out of alignment. Now that both sides are on I can at least shrink each side equally. That’s the plan at least.
I’ve got lots of pictures, but it’s late and I don’t have them readily available to upload. I’ve been making lots of time lapse videos as well so I’ll be posting those as well. If you have questions about pictures, let me know. They all make sense to me because of the order and I did it myself, but that doesn’t really help others sometimes.
(15.5 h)