Last sunday, I had a bad landing that broke my elevator in two pieces. Main frame that goes around the LE and TE just broke off. Should I go ahead and use some CA and put it back together or should I use the old one to draw a new diagram and build a new one from balsa. Plane is a 40 size cap 232 from texasrcplanes.com. I never had to deal with small repairs like this one. Most of the time my crashes wouldnt even leave a single salvageable piece, so I would buy a new ARF kit. but this time I have to do some repairs because I really like this plane. Any advises or ideas will be appreciated.

You should be okay using CA for the repair, but there are other considerations. First off do you have any pics to post? Some of my questions; is the elevator balsa? Are the elevator halves connected via a wooden dowel or other hardwood? Anyway a picture is worth a thousand words.

I have broken balsa elevators in half and successfully glued them back together W/O any problems.

Worse case take a the old elevator with you to the LHS pick out a replacement piece, take it home, recut the holes for the hinges put in place. The last thing if you decide to to the latter, two schools of thought for attachment are out there: place hinges where they need to go, and pin them with a wooden tooth pick to secure (drill into the hing where it attaches). The other is to CA the hinge in place, being careful not to get CA on the actual pined hinge section. Of course all this is if you even have pined hinges. Good luck I'll check back with you.

Steve

Elevator is balsa. Hinges are like those little paper kind of hinges. Control surfaces were ok, the problem was the non moving elevator stab. That piece just broke in half, elevator control surfaces werent damaged at all. I will try to get some photos today. I used some CA and put it back together. It looks like its holding good, couple of violent shake didnt break it, I am still afraid to use it however.

I already cut a new elevator stab from balsa its just 1mm thicker than the original. It weighs 2 grams more than the original after cutting it and gluing it together. but, it feels a lot sturdier also.
I temporarily mounted it on the plane and I could lift the 6 lbs plane holding it from the elevator stab only. So I think I will go with the new one I built. Im still trying to cover it without wrinkles which seems impossible. any ideas on wrinkles? using monocote from eflite. Their instructions are useless, if I go with their instuctions my plane will look older than my grand ma.<br type="_moz" />

Cool, the photos would help. In general when I have broken my Stabalizer, I would cut out the old one and rebuild it. Personally I just never trusted glue to fix the stabalizer. The trailinig edge which is where most elevators reside and is less apt to breakage so I would feel no problem gluing that. Good luck

Steve

As far as replacing the covering, I start by cutting a piece of monocote, (covering) approximately 1 to 1/2" larger than the piece you are trying to cover. Start tacking the corners/edges first, pulling the covering tight as you go. Once the covering is tacked in place and you’re happy with it, pulling out the wrinkles out as you go using the extra covering you left on, go ahead and take the iron to the entire surface area smoothing out and sealing the covering to all internal frames etc. Once completed seal the edges with the iron, cut the excess off with an Exacto blade and repeat for other side. Once completed if you’re absolutely not happy with the job, you can remove some wrinkles with either your iron or even a hair dryer. If you have any questions, I'll be recovering my old Cub soon and I can include some pictures if you like.

Steve
[8D]

The CA glue joint will hold up fine if you pressed the two pieces together well and used enough glue. the worry would be the weakening of the wood adjacent to the joint from splintering. If you're worried about the strength, make a doubler to reinforce the joint an inch or so on either side.

stssa,

Any luck with the repair?

Steve