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Old 11-07-2010 | 07:59 AM
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JohnBuckner
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From: Kingman, AZ
Default RE: What do I do with this covering job?

That airplane has travelled from somewhere on the pacific asian rim all the way to warehouses in North America and then turned around and shipped around the world agine to India. A wooden airframe is a living and breathing thing subject to constant change.

Who knows how many climate changes it has suffered through. Wrinkling is a direct result of a truly globel economy and its going to happen. Even if Tower or whoever sent you another set of wings its likely they would be similarly wrinkled in the same spots.

Best you first acquire the tools of the trade Which means a proper modeling heat gun that the exhaust temperture can be controlled precisely buy not only by electrical means but also the exhaust fan restrictor and the and the controlable intake apetures.

The reason those wrinkles occur is they have been walked into a corner during initial shrinking sufficiently to disappear. Now after all the horrific climate changes they will start to reappear in areas like that and why it has only occured in that spot on your airplane.

Using a iron or heat gun for that matter you do not want to heat just the wrinkle that will only aggrivate things. What you need to do is to uniformly heat as much of the area around the wrinkle to the sides. This is the only thing that will get rid of a wrinkle that has been walked into a corner. The idea is to have a uniformly heated material in a fan shape all around the wrinkles while the tempeture of the wrinkles themselves remain at a slightly lower tempertures. Yes it is tough in a corner but frequently you can improve things. It is a skill that takes practice so you need to consider every wrinkle you may have delt with successfully just another step in your climb up the skills ladder.

One advantage of Monocoat brand is when it can be heated with a heat gun to a temperature higher than the others and there is a point that when you are working on that last little wrinkel that the most of the colors will at a certain temperature and tension suddenly darken in the hotest area and it is at this point that the most pull will occur and if the wrinkle are going to go away will go after the heat is removed. It is at this point you are very close to burning a hole but removing the heat instantly when the color darkening occurs will prevent that.

These techniques can only happen with the right tools and practice, reading or watching vids are ok but the only thing that will help you acquire the skills is doing it and you are not going to be successful every time at first.

Remember alway attempt to heat a large area around a wrinkle and always attempt to walk a wrinkle towards a long straight edge not a corner.

If the Monocoat brand were to become unavalilble suddenly that would be the only thing that could pressure me back to silk, silkspan, tissue and dope and the so called good old days. If the truth be known they were not all that good

John