Back in the 70s, I never saw tautening or non-tautening dope, but did see plasticizer and retarder. When I started flying C/L stunt (where a beautiful finish was part of the competition) both those additives were explained to me by a number of the top flyers. One happened to live in Miami (land of humidity) and yet turned out flawless paintjobs. He also could FLY even better. And I wound up living down there a couple of years. And retarder is wonderful stuff.

I noticed that Sig is still selling dope. And have not ever seen them sell 4 types. And they no longer seem to sell it in gallons.

So we've seen a link to Randolph's tautening nitrate. Which I think was what they sold years ago only without the "tautening" on the label. Because we could buy it at FBOs and additives to go with it. And the plasticizer was a necessity if you wanted the finish to last. Any link to anybody's non-tautening? Or a link to plasticizers?

Retarder was used to slow the drying to defeat fogging.
Plasticizer adjusted the shrink rate.