Originally Posted by
RBACONS
Just a note. For any covering like Solartex or Stits Lite, when using an adhesive you only want to use it on the wood where your seam is, normally the leading/trailing edges of the flight surfaces or the corner longerons on the fuselage. You want the covering to slide over all the ribs/diagonals/sheeting/cross braces, etc when shrinking the fabric. It should only be secured with adhesive at the edges.
The one caveat to that is if there is a concave transition, in which case you usually need adhesive to keep the material from lifting off the concave surface when shrunk. For the cub, this would be at the transition of the fuselage to the vertical fin, although some people stitch the covering to the base of the fin and cover the stitches with pinked tape.
That's not how we were told to do it... anywhere the wood contacts the fabric, apply the stix-it, THEN when applying the covering for example; covering the bottom of the wings frist, attach the covering at the center of the root rib and then pull it tight to the wing tip and attach at the center of the wing tip... then pull the covering tight at the center of the wing panel span and attach at the trailing edge, then pull tight across to the leading edge and attach to the leading edge... then work your way out to the wing tip and wing root, pulling the covering tight and attaching to the trailing edge and leading edges... once you get the fabric taught and tacked around the perimeter, you pull the covering over the wing tip and wing root and tack it in place... then seal the perimeter edges completely, and trim and seal the edges again... then you shrink the fabric over the wing panel using the heat from the iron with no contact of the iron to the covering surface... once its taught and shrunk tight at the proper heat setting, you go back over the wing panel and seal down the rib caps, and any wood sheeted areas.
You do the same with the top of the wing panel, except when you trim the perimeter edges for your overlap, before you seal down your overlapping seams, you put a thin coat of stix-it on the covering surface where the overlap occurs... you let the stix-it cure thoroughly, and then seal down your overlapping seams... the seams will never lift after that... that's the way I've always covered my models using iron-on covering.
This was my first experience using solartex, and the recommendation to use stix-it on the overlapping seams came from the guys over at Solarfilm, so we did just as it was suggested by them... they also suggested to place the covered model in the sun for some time to allow the covering to normalize in the heat from the sun, and then re-shrink as needed... putting the stix-it over the sheeted wood areas prevents any wrinkles from ocurring in the covering over the sheeted areas when placed in the hot sun... I never had any issues with the covering after placing it in the sun, so I must have done something right
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John M