Tag: Covering

Looks like we’ve got ourselves an airplane

On May 25, 2016

Finally have started covering. It took a while to get the fuselage ready to go and cleaned up, but it’s finally going.

I put anti chafe tape around any sharp edge and exposed rivet I could find. I may have gone a little overboard, but I’d rather not worry about it afterwards.

Started with the bottom of the fuselage first. Nothing too hard, but it took forever to make all the cuts. I felt like I wasn’t making any progress at all. Cutting the fabric to size isn’t hard, but it’s very nerve wracking for me. We’re using Stewart Systems covering process, so we had glue on the frame and then tacked it down with an iron to hold it in place so we could work some big wrinkles out. After it was fitted, I brushed glue down through the fabric and wiped off the excess following the Stewart Systems procedure.

One thing I noticed was that as I brushed glue down into the fabric, the fabric was coming off of the tube. I tried tacking it down with a hotter temperature on the iron and that seemed to solve the issue, so I think my iron was just not hot enough to really tack the fabric down. I looked over the fabric carefully after everything had dried and it was stuck on there pretty good, so I’m not worried that it didn’t adhere. Also, the fabric to fabric joint is the important one which will be next.

For the later part of my Tuesday evening, I started on the left side of the fuselage. Fortunately I had a friend stop by just in time to help me cut the fabric to length, We then applied glue to the bond area for the left side and then began to fit the fabric and start trimming it down. I finished up the night with only one more big cut to make because I was getting tired and didn’t want to fuss with the vertical stabilizer transition.

(7.5 h)

Almost building time

By Ryan

On April 26, 2016

In S-20

Te semester is drawing to a close with finals happening next week. I’ve planned a lot for the summer and hope that I can at least get half of it done.

This past weekend I went to a three day course on the Stewart System. It reinforced some covering techniques and more importantly we went all the way through a topcoat on the frame. I learned a lot and found out that the painting thing probably won’t be so scary. It won’t be a showplane, but I figure it’s like a baby. It’ll never be ugly. 🙂

Plan for May is to start covering the fuselage and the small parts like flaps and rudder. When the fuselage is covered I’m going to get a coat of EkoFill on and then transport it up to the airport for paint. I’ll also try to get a few of the small pieces covered in EkoFill so I can have those ready if I’m able to get them going on color coats.

Finally, if that all goes well and by some miracle I still have some summer time left, I’ll try and start covering the wings. The idea is that having the fuselage covered and painted will keep me plenty busy getting things installed over the fall and winter.

So stay tuned to see how much I actually get done haha.

(15 h)

First picture – Frame covered with no tapes

Second picture – Frane with brushed cross coat of EkoFill

Third Picture – Two sprayed cross coats of EkoFill

Fourth Picture – Three cross coats of color

Covering begins!

By Ryan

On December 18, 2015

In S-20

This past weekend I started working on the boot cowl and covering some small items.

The boot cowl has been going together pretty good. I’ll try to get some pictures up soon. The last post mentioned the firewall. This past weekend I worked on getting the bottom and one side panel fit up. The bottom panel took a little bit of work to get fit. One thing that cause a minor issue was that the weld in the center of the bottom tube protruded forward of the fuselage. This meant that the flange on the bottom skin wouldn’t sit flat against the firewall. The issue that it caused was that there is an opening on the bottom skin for the nosewheel strut exit. This isn’t needed for my plane, but there is still support structure for those who do use a nosewheel welded into the fuselage. The opening in the skin slides over this structure a little. All that I had to do was open up the hole on the bottom skin some and it slid right over and all was right in the world.

I also got one side of the boot cowl fit up with the help of some friends that stopped by. We got the tape on the fuselage to mark the centerline of the tube on the door frame and proceeded to line up the side skin. As noted by some other builders, the manual mentions that the cut out in the bottom of the side skin should line up with the bottom of the fuselage tube. In reality, it lines up right around the centerline. This is the only way for it to be in line with the center of the door frame tube. Not a showstopper, but required some additional thinking which can be troublesome for us kit builders.

That was all done on Friday. Sunday I started covering an aileron and the left stabilizer. I decided a few weeks ago to take the plunge and switch to Stewart Systems for the covering process. The main benefit to me was a less hazardous glue and primer/UV Blocker/filler than Superflite (which is what ships with the covering kit). The glue has a very faint odor and cleans up with water pretty well if it is still wet. This means you could glue fabric almost anywhere. It took some figuring out the first day. I’m the first brave soul around my local airport to try this stuff so I read the books, watched the videos and set out to give it a go. I had some help from an airport guy who uses Polyfiber. The biggest adjustment for him was letting the glue dry on the frame itself. Stewart Systems has you apply glue to the frame and then let it dry. It then becomes tacky and you can lay the fabric onto the glue and it will stick, but not enough to keep you from removing it. This means that in theory, you shouldn’t have to work with wet glue while trying to get the fabric to lay down.

Once the fabric is where you want it, you run a 250 degree iron down the center of the tube to cement it into place. This is a pretty strong bond and gets the fabric ready to be glued the final time. The last step is to brush a coat of glue on top of the bonded area to completely soak the fabric creating the actual bond. You wipe the excess glue off with a shop towel to make everything pretty down the road.

Maria has been excited about the covering process so after I felt comfortable enough, we brought the pieces to the house to start working on the rivets, patches, and tapes. We brought it up to the kitchen table and got to work. I got a neat timelapse (at least I think it is) of our work last night and I’ve also got some pictures of the before stages. I’m working on getting a more complete picture timeline on the next piece.

(3 h Fuselage; 10 h Covering)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxTGnl9YkFE&w=560&h=315]