I am building my 4*60 arf and It tells me i need epoxy to join the wings, but i dont have that. Can i use something like wood glue?

NO!!!!

eherm...unless you want your wings to fly apart in midair. The center part of the wing takes a whole ton of the flying stresses, and while wood glue is a decent bond, 30 minute epoxy is better. For all the high strenght areas, use epoxy otherwise it is likely th ebond wont last long.

epoxy is pretty cheap too, certainly cheaper than a new plane.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

dont use wood glue to join your wings
you could use thick CA but i would just use epoxy. If you dont have any go to your local hardware store or a lowes or home depot. you can get a small tube of 5 or 30 minute epoxy for like $5

you don't have to use epoxy on your planes......just use it on the ones you want to keep.

Walmart, Home Depot, local hardware stores etc etc etc will carry 30-minute epoxy in small cheap packages.

It's worth the trip to the store

NO!!!!!!!!!!

By all means, go to a parts store or something and buy some epoxy. This will strengthen the wing up significantly. Wood glue it so weak for this critical joint.

Remember, this joint is what keeps the plane in the air at all times. If it fails, well you know the rest.

DTB

I posted a thread on this board a while back, asking the same question in so many words. And the replies I got were that Wood Glue (Aliphatic) while not a strong, is still stronger than the surrounding wood and wouldn't break. I banked on that and used Aliphatic for my wing braces. However, I am also wrapping a 3" wide piece of fiberglass tape around the wing section and epoxying it into position with 45 min epoxy. Hopefully, I'll be OK.

This is not really a fair test of the wood glue. The fiberglass tape and epoxy is 1,000 times stronger than the wood glue joint. I can assure you the wood glue joint will never fail.

Why would you even want to take the chance of a wing joint failure by not using epoxy, just because you dont have any at the house? Go to WalMart or your local hardware store and GET SOME EPOXY!!! Dont waste the time you've spent assembling your plane by using some other adhesive that WILL FAIL!!!! If you try it anyway, you dont have anyone to blame but yourself when you see your wings separate in the middle and your neat new plane come spiraling to the ground![X(]

Your profile says you have three years building and four years flying experience, and you had to ask this question??

Another thing I don't get is this:

I bought a bottle of Gluit Pica Aliphatic Glue.
Heres what it says:

"Strong, quick setting and sandable. Makes wood joints stronger than epoxy. Thick coats DO-NOT make joints stronger. Use water to wash tools before setting. Ideal for wood and other porous materials."

Stronger than epoxy? Not from what I am hearing. Is this a little white lie?

I used strong wood glue to join my alphas wings together. lately i've been pushing my alpha pretty hard but no sigh of fatigue. I've used this glue before and made a mistake with a drawer, it was only glued for about an hour and i couldn't even pry the wood off. This stuff i used is STRONG!

Byris, For purposes of making wing joints for model airplanes, epoxy is the better choice because it is good at gap filling. If the joint to be glued was a very good fit and could be well clamped, then a good wood glue, such as the Pica glue you mentioned, would make a very strong joint but the fact is that some of time the time, perhaps most of the time, the joint is not that good and can't be clamped making epoxy the "can't go wrong" choice.

If you have a good fitting joint, wood glue is ever bit as good as slow epoxy and much better than 5 minute epoxy. I've put many a 1/4 scale together with nothing but wood glue with never a joint failure. The necessity for epoxy use is much over rated . A good wood glue joint will be stronger than the wood and much stronger than a poorly made epoxy joint.

I think epoxy might have some flex to it where wood glue doesn't. Also wood glue will pull away from a joint so a perfect joint is necessary. I think you should try wood glue and let us know how it holds up [>:]

Just kidding by the way..

Yeah but to get wood glue to set up right and make the strongest possible joint you really need to clamp the joint. Fine if you're building a kit, but hard to do on an ARF. Consider than the Mosquito's main spar was built up wood, glued together with..... regular wood glue. Well, not REGULAR wood glue, but not epoxy. The Junkers company made an enormous flying wing glider in WW2, and it was all wood, all glued together...... my point is, you don't NEED epoxy to make a strong joint. But I'm not going to bet a plane on anything else.......


Andy

Spokman, if you really check you will find most wood glues (all that I know of) are much more flexable than the epoxies and hold up much better under shock loads (hard landing or crashes) as well as vibration. Also, clamping is not necessary on a good fitting joint; however, you must leave it unmoved while it is setting up just as you do the epoxies if you want a strong joint.

So would a good epoxy joint be stronger than a poorly made wood glue joint?

Barring all this wood glue vs. epoxy stuff,,,,,
I say, use what the instructions suggest.

I'm finding more and more that that is good advise.

EObrad,

If you've already got it together, with wood glue, don't sweat it. Just lay fiberglas tape (the 3"wide stuff)along the wing joint and attach it with CA.

I saw a guy fly his Corvette (it's a local plane, long & slender, 65" wingspan or so) with a .61SF for quite a while, sell it to our friend, who flew it another 200 flights or so. One day said friend was practicing rolling circles and a wing came off, fluttered down while the rest of the plane augured in, etc.

We inspected the remains, and determined that the wing had no joiner. No ply joiner running from one wing into the other. None. It was joined at the mid ribs, and fiberglassed. Well over 200 documented flights, with the only thing holding the wing halves together being the 'glas tape & CA. All that load was absorbed by the sheeting in the middle. Now, a spar joiner would have been better, but it lasted a couple hundred flights.

On the other hand... if you don't have it together yet... spend the $5 and get some epoxy.

Good luck,
Dave Olson