SLOtyro

Am another retiree getting back into this great hobby after many years - am building a Kougar II Kit that collected dust in the garage...my question (finally) is about joining the wing halves. How do you "clamp" them together for the glue to cure? I suppose 5min epoxy and carefully holding them together will work? Would appreciate advice. Also plan to put in an OS .46AX - what d'you think?
Thanks.

soarrich

My Feedback: (98)

I use 5 minute epoxy and masking tape.

SLOtyro

thanks Rich

FentonFlyer

My Feedback: (11)

I would never use 5 minute epoxy for joining wings. 30 min only.
As far as clamping goes, if you have open bays, you can use rubber bands, or tape though them. At the T/E torque rods, if have them, make good rubber band clamp points. Whatever you do, do a dry run and have everything planned out and laid in front of you, especially if you're gonna use 5min.

MinnFlyer

My Feedback: (4)

Ditto!!!!!!

5-min epoxy may not give you enough working time

soarrich

My Feedback: (98)

Five minutes is enough time to line up the center airfoils? I've never had a problem, but if you're worried about it use the 12~15 minute epoxy, the Vontage turtle recommend it, nice and slow.

I think it's better to get the part stuck together alined well quickly, the longer you have to wait the more chance for stuff to happen to un-aline the centers. On some planes I use 10 second CA, but you have to glass it afterwords.

twn

I used a poly glue, Elmer's Ultimate (now called nano, and similar to gorilla but half the price and thin like syrup) to do my king kobra wing join. I used masking tape to line it up and pins in the leading edge and trailing edge to keep in lined up. This stuff is crazy strong.

I recently cut out the servo hole in the wing for the retracts and this disected the wing join. OMG it the foaming ultimate glue penitrated the foam by 1/2" on either side of the wing join and was a B****H to remove the glued foam. WOW!! I love this stuff.

soarrich

My Feedback: (98)

It's good stuff, but you have to be careful so that as it expands it doesn't spread the wings apart, I had that happen once, so I stop using it for this application.

twn

I had no problems with the wing pushing apart. But again I put pins in the le and te. One on each side going in on a slight angle into the le and te balsa and a good 4 strips of tape on each side. The glue foams for the first hour or so after that it stops.

MinnFlyer

My Feedback: (4)

The biggest problem with using the 5-minute stuff is that if anything goes wrong, you may not have time to correct it.

kestrel0222

My Feedback: (1)

I use it all the time for joining wing halves, never had a problem yet (37+ years). If you do all your prep work correctly, everything should be fine.

FentonFlyer

My Feedback: (11)

I just like to have a little more time than that, especially with a critical joint. Add in a spar joiner or two and I have even less time.
I also thought you get a stronger joint since the 30min has more time to penetrate the wood fibers.

Whatever works for ya though.

SLOtyro

Thanks to all for the good advice. I went with 5 min epoxy on the grounds that a) my wife was willing to help hold the thing, and b) the quick cure actually seemed to reduce the chance of things getting misaligned after the join was made. We rehearsed it and all went well. This is of course a foam wing plane, so many of the excellent suggestions were not applicable to this model.