Carlson Skunk Works

The past several weeks have been quite busy, but I have managed to achieve what I consider a major milestone. The first aileron has fabric on it!!!

Here is a picture of the aileron with its bottom fabric attached.

I am using the Stewart Systems EkoBond glue which is sort of like latex paint. There is no odor and things clean up pretty well with water. It dries fairly quickly and is quite easy to work with. I can do it, after all. There are a bunch of videos on YouTube showing how to use it.

I started by cleaning up the aileron using a fine rasp and then touching up the sealer where I thought I was getting close to the wood. Then I put anti-chafe tape on each of the ribs where I expect to tie down the fabric with a rib stitch. When that was done I “painted” the areas where the fabric needs to be secured with the EkoBond glue. The fabric is pressed into the tacky glue and sticks in place easily without any clamps. The fabric can be pulled off of the glue and repositioned until it is the way one wants it. THEN an iron set at about 250 degrees F is used to heat activate the glue and secure the fabric. When that step is done more glue is applied and worked through the fabric in the glued areas. Finally the fabric is shrunk to 250 degrees for the initial shrink.

The bottom fabric is now nice and tight and looks really good! Here is what it looks like from the top …

and from the bottom.

Notice that the hinges have been removed while I put on the bottom fabric. I reinstalled them before I started on the top fabric.

The top fabric is applied the same way as the bottom fabric was, but it is a little bit more difficult. This is because I needed to make a hole for the control horn to go through and because the front edge of the fabric needs to be secured around the inside of the leading edge plywood. I guess it wasn’t really any more difficult, but it was a bit more messy and took just a bit longer.

The finished product does look good, though.

Around the control horn I added a second layer of fabric. They guys on the Stewart Systems video do this on the wings where the strut brackets need to come through the fabric and I thought it would be a good idea to do the same thing here. I cut a circle of fabric using a quart yogurt container lid as a template. It is about 4″ in diameter. I folded it and marked where I wanted the control horn to come through and cut the opening for the control horn. Then I marked where it would lay on the top fabric and applied glue, positioned the fabric circle and worked more glue through it. I think it came out pretty nice.

Now I need to do the final shrinks on the fabric. The first pass will be to redo the 250 degree pass, then do a 300 degree pass and finish it up with a 350 degree pass. When that is done I will do some rib stitching, but that will be for the next post.