smilam

I had a DLE20 die on take off and had to land in a field. I landed with the wings level but landed perpendicular to a tire rut about 4” deep. The airplane is a Spacewalker 2 with the landing gear mounted on the wing. The wing detached from the fuselage and flipped upside down and a hole was poked in the covering. It ended up being a “L” shaped tear. The plane is painted with Rust-oleum X2. I tried removing the paint with mineral spirits so I could put the patch directly to the coverite but that didn’t remove any paint. What can I use to remove the paint or can I put the patch over the paint? What is the best way to patch a hole in coverite?

bryanmiick

I don't know if this will help as I have not used it on coverite or rustoleum. I have repaired sig Koverall painted with krylon though. I was able to patch over the Krylon with sig stix it and more Koverall, which I then doped and resprayed the area with krylon. I first tested the products on a sample to see if the paints would work together or bubble up.I was a little concerned that I would not be able to fix with the krylon, but it all worked. I have done 2 repairs to this plane and need to do a third as I screwed up a take off a while back. the original covering job was Koverall applied with stix it and then doped before spraying with rattle can Krylon. I found the best results without primer as it made the paint thicker and more brittle

smilam

That makes me believe it might work. Besides yours is the only answer that I have received so evidently nobody else has attempted this type of repair which must mean we are the only two who have ever crashed a fabric covered airplane and attempted to repair it.

bryanmiick

I think that the issue with the repair is what is compatible with the rustoleum paint as I have repaired many fabric covered planes, most have been painted with dope or the old pre painted coverite. the Krylon was a first for me.

Lee Taylor

If I were to approach this my first thoughts are that I need some backing support. First I would clean up the hole with an x-acto knife or whatever. Maybe even consider cutting the hole so that it is square. I would then play around with some materials that could serve as a backplate (balsa sheeting for instance). The back plate needs to go "into" the hole and attach (with glue) to the rear face of the coverite (or balsa if there is balsa under the coverite). What you are trying to do is build up a surface to attach to. Use this sheetrock video as an example. Especially note the wood backing at the 6:24 minute mark

smilam

I finally got a couple of other projects off the work bench and got started on patching the hole in the wing of the spacewalker. First I made the hole round to eliminate corners which become problematic in a lot of materials. When I did this I found a broken piece of balsa spar that had to be repaired and then sandwiched between a couple of pieces of lite ply. I scuffed the paint with sandpaper and then cleaned it with alcohol to get ride of any oils from my hands. Then I applied stikit around the hole and applied a coverite patch with about a 1/4” overlap over the hole. While ironing down the patch some adhesive bled out from under the patch so I need to clean that up before I paint it. Does anybody have a suggestion on what to use to clean up the adhesive? The stikit can says to use Butyrate Dope Thinner to thin the stikit which I don’t have. Is there anything else that will work? I may have to try putting some stikit on a piece of scrap coverite and try some alcohol, paint thinner, lacquer thinner, or acetone to see if anything works.

bryanmiick

try a sample of the Stix it on a scrap and try just painting over it, you may not need to remove it. it should act similar to nitrate dope which can usually be painted over. acetone may soften it also, but should not be used to thin it since it doesn't mix as well as dope thinner.

smilam

Today I put a piece of coverite on some scrap balsa and then put some stikit on it. After letting it dry I tried some different chemicals to see what would remove the adhesive with out damaging the coverite. I wasn’t worried about paint damage since the patch needs to be painted anyway.
Mineral Spirits , Denatured Alcohol, Turpentine, and Goo Gone didn’t remove any adhesive.
Lacquer Thinner removed the most of the adhesive but left some in the fabric weave.
Acetone and Sig Thinner both worked really well. I had forgotten that I had some Sig Thinner.
When I cleaned up the adhesive around the patch on my painted wing I did some with the Acetone and some with the Sig Thinner. They worked equally well with both removing some paint along with the adhesive.
If you need to remove some Stikit and have some Acetone on hand I wouldn’t hesitate to use it because it is a lot cheaper than Sig Thinner and might save you a trip to the hobby store which may or may not have it. Just know that if you use either one on a painted surface you will need to do some paint touch up.

RBACONS

My Feedback: (3)

MEK would be another solvent for removing Stix-it. Probably more effective than acetone but harder to find nowadays.

smilam

I just tried what I had on hand. I did see that MEK and Acetone were similar. Ace Hardware advertises a MEK substitute and I wonder how it compares.