RCU Forums - View Single Post - bad luck at the feild
View Single Post
Old 07-19-2012, 11:08 AM
  #13  
jester_s1
Moderator
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Fort Worth, TX
Posts: 7,266
Received 35 Likes on 30 Posts
Default RE: bad luck at the feild

I'd say for a 17 year old the OP's spelling and grammar were quite good. Some of the posts you read here are so badly written you can't even tell what it is they want to know. Go to the car forums to read some really bad English!

So to answer the question that was thoroughly asked and understood by us all: Yes, it's probably worth rebuilding. Absolutely anything can be rebuilt. It's just a question of how much time and money will it take from you to do it. Sometimes it's easier to just go buy another one, and sometimes it's not. Actually, usually it's not. To get started, remove the covering (assuming it's a balsa plane) from the broken area and see what you're really dealing with. You'll likely find that it looks worse than you initially thought, but once you're done fixing it you'll probably find that it wasn't as bad as your initially thought. All that's really involved in fixing a bad wreck is to glue every broken piece back together perfectly straight and then brace them to be as strong as they were before. That doesn't mean to make every piece so strong that you can't bend it, but rather only strong enough that a light flexing doesn't create more bend at the repair than in the rest of the piece. Also give the plane a very thorough inspection to see if there is cracked wood anywhere besides the main damage. Sometimes the impact will cause bulkheads to pop loose or split wood inside the open structures without any obvious damage showing from the outside. Flex everything to be sure it feels as strong as it should be and open everything up to check it out that doesn't seem right. Then when the woodwork is done, you'll need to fill in the repair crack with some lightweight spackling and re-cover your plane to your standards of appearance.