I've bought an old Trainer. The original monokot looks like it's trained many beginners and has turned off white! The plane is still strong and was originaly built well. Is there an easy was to take off old monokot or is just easyer to recover the old bird. Thanks for your help.

You can peel it off and sand it and re-cover it. If it is old, I would do that. RE-covering over top won't work. If you try to just trim it and it is really old, it gets brittle and the heat for the new will blow holes in it.

If you have trouble getting some off, heat it. You will leave some residue on the plane, but you can sand that off pretty easy and get it back to balsa quick. Don't over sand it. Re-covering is sometimes the best option.

Great... Thanks for the advise Flyboy.

Max

No problem. Also, if you want to try re-shrinking it before you end up re-doing it, you can re-tighten it with the monokote iron and heat gun, but do it carefully. If you want to clean it, I have used laquer thinner to clean it and it does a pretty good job.

Have fun with it.

A good cleaner sometimes is a debonder. If the Monokote is is good enough condition you can polish it VERY CAREFULLY, and paint it. Use steel wool and carefully avoid rubbing too hard where the covering adheres to the wood.

How can an area that has been soaked with oil be treated?

Go to a good drug store, get the best alcohol you can get, not the rubbing kind, but the good stuff, and soak it in, I used to clean it with a tooth brush and alcohol. Some people also use K2R spot remover. Both work well. I have always had better luck with alcohol.

Two things....

Firstly (and I have never had occasion to do this, thankfully), to remove the oil soaked in bals, I have heard that Kitty Litter is really good. Pile the litter on to the soaked area, and leave it for a while (day or so). Repeat until the litter has soaked up all the oil. See the following references:
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_11...tm.htm#1131220
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_10...tm.htm#1034704

As for the alcohol. Most pharmacies only stock what they call rubbing, or surgical alcohol (whcih are in the 70 to 90% alcohol range). I Struggled to find "denatured alcohol" which is almost 100%. Eventually, I found it at Home Depot in the paint section. Look for a product called "Stove Fuel" .... yeah, stupid, isn't it. I believe it's subtitled "Methy-Alcohol". Labelled as 99% alcohol.

gus

If you sand the balsa wood i would use a tac rag
and clean all balsa before covering.

I vaccumn it off first than use a tac rag and then cover.

It might also be worth your while to get a can of Balsarite. Once you have the old covering off, paint the entire wooden surface with the Balsarite. The new covering will adhere MUCH better.
Dennis-