I been flying my Avistar most of the summer.I went out to the field last weekend to fly and when I went to take off my Avistar didn't want to get off the ground.Well to make a long story short, the elevator came lose and after I crash the rudder was also broke lose.They where epoxied on,do I epoxy them on again? Seems to me the new epoxy wont be able to soak in to the wood because of the old and it would be weaker than the first time.
Thanks
Dave

A couple of ways to go. First, you should remove excess old epoxy. By that I mean any epoxy that isn't in the wood. Just use some coarse paper on a sanding block and go slow.

You can punch shallow holes in the wood where the two pieces meet with a toothpick and when the new epoxy goes into the holes, you'll have epoxy "nails."

Good advice.......

That's what I did after crashing my Avistar........I was able to sand off all the old surface epoxy w/a sanding drum on my dremel set at low speed. Be carful not to linger in one spot for too long though or you risk dimpling the balsa. I did the rest (read hard to reach areas w/dremel here)by hand. Came out really good. I also saw something in one of the RC magazines where if you have a "woodpecker" you should run it across the mating surfaces to ensure absorption of the new epoxy.

Also, make sure to check the interior of the joints on the fuselage where the stablizers fit into, just to make sure there hasn't been any internal cracks that you'll regret not looking for later! The upper surface of the fuselage is very thin and doesn't have too much internal bracing helping the vertical stablizer stay upright.


Good Luck!