Well after getting through the right half of the lower wing, I am convinced that I just got lucky with the left side. I don’t know if it was the added pressure of documenting this or what, but I really made it hard on myself this time.

The toughest part of this is dealing with the I-Struts that protrude up from the wing. The upper wing has these too, but for some reason, they weren’t as troublesome (Picture1). My strategy was simple to begin with, I added a “skirt” of Ultracote around the bottom portion of the I-Strut. This was for 2 reasons – places the base color around the strut so there’s no wood exposed and gives a better bonding surface for the Ultracote sheet (pictures 2 and 3).

Once the “skirt” was in place, I added the sunburst sheet to the wing top. I first aligned the points of the sunburst in the center of the wing and tacked it down with the trim iron. Next, I tacked at the bottom center of the wing so I could pull the sheet tight out to the tip. Stretching the sheet, I tacked down the sheet onto the last rib just before the wingtip (picture4). I then stretched the covering at the leading edge just in front of the I-Strut and tacked it down there. At this point, I was able to stretch the covering down at the trailing edge just behind the I-Strut causing a noticeable bulge where the I-Strut was positioned under the sheet (picture5). Taking a fresh razor blade, carefully cut into the covering directly on either side of the I-Strut making sure the blade doesn’t stray from the side of the strut (like I did). If you do this correctly, you’re left with a rectangular sliver of sheeting removed and the I-Strut exposed. If you slip like I did, you’re left with a football shaped hole that is going to need some attention (picture6).

Given I had spend so much time putting these panels together, I wasn’t about to let a less than perfect cut ruin my day. Instead, I cut some strips of Ultracote like I had for the skirt, and applied them the same way to the top layer. This effectively filled the gap seen in picture7. You can see in Picture7 the additional layer added to hide/fix the elongated hole I cut in the covering for the I-Strut. As you can see in picture8, this was looking ugly at the beginning. Using my trim iron, I tried to get the repair patch onto the I-Strut and the sheet with as few wrinkles as possible. This is where I was very glad I was using Ultracote as I believe it’s a bit more forgiving than some of the other coverings.

Continued in next post…

Picture1 – The I-Strut
Picture2/3 – Adding the “skirt” around the I-Strut
Picture4 – Tacking down the sheet before exposing the I-Strut
Picture5 – Stretching the sheet once it’s tacked to reveal the I-Strut outline
Picture6 – My careless cut … nothing like making extra work
Picture7 – Creating the patch and attaching it to the I-Strut
Picture8 – Still looking ugly – needs some more work