mbiedul

My Feedback: (3)

I used silk exclusively in the 1950s and 1960s. I loved the way it went on wet and shrank tight. It loosened when doped, then shrank up tight again. And of course it was bulletproof, as opposed to silkspan which ripped on every hard landing. Heck, silkspan ripped just on the bicycle trip to the flying field! We tried ripstop nylon from suplus parachutes to save money and it shrank up nice when doped, but twisted the wings out of alignment. So...just a caution when experimenting with fabrics to use material with straight grain (or pattern or bias or whatever the weave is called), and be sure that the grain is parallel to the wing's average centre line! If laid out on a diagonal, a warp is almost assured when the dope cures. Dacron like Koverall or S**** Lite is now my preference, since shrinkage is so precisely controlled with varying amounts of heat. I do have more trouble getting nice results with the edges of synthetic materials....silk sands easily but Koverall just wants to get fuzzy. -Mike

049flyer

My Feedback: (18)

Three tips for you:

You'll save some weight if you cover the sheeted areas with silkspan. Silkspan is lighter than Koverall and requires less paint to fill.

Trim the Koverall as well as silkspan with the sanding block instead of a razor blade. You'll get a nice feathered edge without stray fibers. Just make sure the edges are well attached and sand away from the surface.

Use Nitrate dope mixed with a liberal amount of Talc for your filler followed by one coat of clear. This will give you a glass smoothe finish in no time! It's cheap too!

Sport_Pilot

Anybody try Jap tissue instead of silkspan for this? Seems like it would be lighter and fill quicker. After all you are not going for strength on the sheeted areas.