Best way to make wing fillets?
#1
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Best way to make wing fillets?
I figured the scratch-builders will know this answer What's the best way to make wing fillets? Carve them myself or maybe epoxy/microballoons? Any suggestions will be helpful. Thanks!
#2
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RE: Best way to make wing fillets?
If you've got (or can easily make) some triangular stock about the right size and right weight/strength, I'd use both. Glue the stock in place and sand in the "hollow". That insures the job will add strength to the joint. Then place the epoxy slurry down and smooth it out as it sets up. It'll do a lot of the tapering the balsa didn't do and can widen out the fillet where the balsa didn't.
It's always been sorta difficult for me to make a uniform fillet with just filler/paste/slurry/whatever and the balsa helps that out a bunch. But balsa by itself seems to always fail around the part of the joint that's closest to the nose, and the epoxy seems to help that out.
If you really want to strengthen the joint, after you've got the epoxy filler smoothed out and sanded, lay glass or carbon over the joint out onto the wing and up onto the fuse (or wherever the fillet is).
It's always been sorta difficult for me to make a uniform fillet with just filler/paste/slurry/whatever and the balsa helps that out a bunch. But balsa by itself seems to always fail around the part of the joint that's closest to the nose, and the epoxy seems to help that out.
If you really want to strengthen the joint, after you've got the epoxy filler smoothed out and sanded, lay glass or carbon over the joint out onto the wing and up onto the fuse (or wherever the fillet is).
#5
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RE: Best way to make wing fillets?
To make a light fillet, glue on a base of 1/32 ply, then glue on white foam. Sand the foam to shape going only 1 direction. The foam will catch and chunk out if you go back and forth. After shaping, cover the foam with a light coat of microballoons and epoxy, smoothing out with alcohol on your finger.