When doing wings:

Yes I always start by sealing the perimiter and later sealing ribs as well as any leading edge sheeting if any. You will find your most successful order is after sealing the perrimeter the middle areas are shrunk before sealing ribs or the sheeting. You can use either the gun or iron for this and if used the iron is used with very light pressure to avoid sealing the ribs. The idea is to allow the entire panel to be shunk uniformly and this will avoid the numerous small wrinkles in the corrners of every ribs. Now after the wing looks great and smooth go back and seal all the ribs with an iron using an even pressure with no attempt to walk the material sideways. Seal all the ribs as well as the sheeted areas.


Now lets talk about sealing ribs and sheeted areas. A wing that has not been sealed at these areas will be a much weaker wing in torsional stiffness. In the case of most trainer type wing especially ones that have no sheeting at all such as a Senior Kaydet or LT-40 for example the integrety of the design is dependant entirely upon the covering material and full sealing of the ribs to bring up to the intended strength.

Most irons run the hottest in the heal and coolest in the toe this is normal and can be used to advantage if you take this into account as you cover. I do not us a temperature gage but I use monocoat exclusively anymore and I also use T-shirt socks always so don,t worry and run the iron at the hotest.

John