by bdiedenhofen » Mon May 12, 2008 8:22 am
I did do a final shrink, and it was fine. There is some minor scalloping on the trailing edge, not bad though.
The underside was slightly shrunk, and then weights were placed between the ribs, and the sunbarrier was brushed through to hold the cloth to the ribs. When dry, the weights were removed, and a final shrink was done. It has held to the camber nicely.
I was curious as to how well it would hold. When I tightened up at the wing tip, I had to clamp a piece of wood over the top of the wing to get the cloth to contact the last rib. There was a lot of tension on that point. When the Hypec was dry, the wood clamp came off, and the cloth stayed stuck. It's been stuck there for four years now, and holding well. So the stuff works.
The only place thats mechanically fastened is the upper curve of the wing tip. The original aluminum cap strip was riveted over the cloth to hold the shape there.
My plan for recovering is to cut the cloth away between the panels, leaving strips over each rib. I saw this in a book somewhere, maybe the Hypec manual? Anyway, the plan is to lift one end of the strip, and then roll it over a pencil. By rolling the strip of cloth off of the rib on a pencil it should lift off without damaging anything underneath. Alternately, the strip of cloth could be left, sanded smooth, and the new cloth glued over it.
I'm expecting that I will get 15 to 20 years out of the cloth, so I'm not too concerned about the recover project for a while yet.
I have done a few repairs, and it's super easy. Simply clean the top paint from the area where the patch is going with MEK and then glue the patch on with sunbarrier. Once dry, shrink the patch a bit, and put on a coat of sunbarrier to fill the weave, and then paint. Works great.