Help With Covering
 

In the process of covering my Sig Cub and im not sure which direction to take. I have the Stab,Elev,Rud, and Bottom of Fuse covered. Now should i cover the 2 sides and include the tail Fin? or do i cover the 2 sides and run a 3rd piece of covering for the top of Fuse and tail fin?

Abit of a confusing covering job and i couldnt find a forum explaining. nor any pictures of the process only covered fully or not at all.

RE: Help With Covering
 

It is actually dependent upon your preference, and or how many seams you can live with. My preference is to glue the stab and the fin in place, then cover the just angles below above the stab and to the sides of the fin with 1" strips of covering that have been creased. Then I cover the sides and fill in the gaps (between angle strips) with one piece per side, which meet at the top. I am sure there are better ways, however this is only my preference.

In your case, I would glue in the already covered stab (remembering to remove the covering where the stab meets the fuse), then cover the fin, then cover both sides including any fill between the stab and fin, if that makes sense.

RE: Help With Covering
 

Trax,
Check the thread here in this forum Sig or BUSA 1/4 Cub, I was explaining this exact situation to another guy. This is a tricky spot to cover on a Cub and it can be tougher or easier depending on your covering material.
Anthony

RE: Help With Covering
 

There recently was a really good post here on covering a cub. I don't know how to find it but a search.

Bill

RE: Help With Covering
 

Waco, Where did you run the seam on the nose of the plane? is it down the middle on top or did you wrap down abit i cannot decide what route to take on that.
The sides and fin i will figure out by your thread and pics and such.

RE: Help With Covering
 

I covered one side up to the edge oof the nose sheeting and let the other side wrap over top of the nose sheeting and trimmed it off with about a 1/4" overlap. When working with Koverall the seams all but dissapear after a few coats of dope. I do not use iron on coverings anymore after using Koverall.
Anthony

RE: Help With Covering
 

Does the Tail look correct ?
i couldnt find a great close picture to base it upon, and all the ones i did find were kits or ARF's that i know werent to scale.Very difficult covering this plane and im affraid i made it harder on myself because i opted to keep the gap between the Fuse and Stab surfaces as the real Cub has. keep in mind i still need to get a few wrinkles out and the fabric is not shrunk
Heres what ive gotten so far, hope these pictures upload!

RE: Help With Covering
 

Trax,
What kind of covering are you using? I am building a cub currently.
Thanks Alan

RE: Help With Covering
 

Well this is only my second airplane and i didnt know much about covering, or i wouldnt have chosen it.
This Cub is getting Coverite 21st Century pre painted fabric. It looks nice once its on, but unfortunatly coverite stopped making there Cub Yellow matching Paint. Next time i use fabric i will definitly go with regular fabric and paint it myself. Im going to have to give the plane a very light extremely thinned out spray of paint with the gun. because the Cowl, and Landing gear doesnt exactly match.

RE: Help With Covering
 

Trax,
How well does it take paint. I want to cover mine as a L4 and need olive drab, but they don't make it. If it paints well I may use white and paint it the correc color.
Thanks
Alan

RE: Help With Covering
 

I should be throwing my matching paint on it this week il update ya and let ya know how it takes. I dont forsee any problems as it stands though.

RE: Help With Covering
 

Trax your fillet looks pretty good, once you get the other side covered and everything shrunk it will all come together, just remember to keep the heat off of the cross member that you tacked the covering to or it will pull off.
Anthony

RE: Help With Covering
 

Got the whole fuse covered today il post pics tomorrow but it was the biggest pain in the butt covering that tail. I wanted as least amount of seams as possible so i only used 2 pieces covering the sides, tail, and ending on top stringer. I think its going to look ok once i shrink it all im pleased with it.

I was worried about the Fillet , id never covered in that fashion to make that effect.

RE: Help With Covering
 

Your cub is looking great.....

I am in the finishing stages of a Sig 1/5th Scale Cub. I went with SolarTex covering from Balsa USA and Nelson Hobby Paint. The SolarTex fabric was purchased in the natural color of semi transparent white. The Nelson stuff is good but difficult to work with. My 1st attempt at an "All Painted" plane.

Glad to see you went with the scale fillet on the rudder, looks nice.

I covered the sides of my fuse first and worked my way up. This ensures the seams are less visible as viewed from the top of the plane.

The first photo is the scheme I am copying....

SunDevilPilot

RE: Help With Covering
 

SunDevilPilot,
What kind of paint did you use? I am thinking of covering mine the same or maybe as a AE 1 (air ambulance).
Thanks
Alan

RE: Help With Covering
 

I used Nelson Hobby Paint:

http://www.nelsonhobby.com/paint.html

The Nelson stuff is good but difficult to work with doing tapework. The paint does not break cleanly at the tapeline leaving you to cut the line with an X-Acto as you pull the tape. Not for the faint of heart.

My next plane I am going to try AutoAir Colors + an automotive clear.

SunDevilPilot

RE: Help With Covering
 

How soon did you pull the tape, after painting ?

I'm nearly ready to mask and paint my Spacewalker, using Solartex and Nelson paints. I don't need any extra problems, considering the complexity of the paint scheme.

RE: Help With Covering
 

I have tried immediately after spraying and approximately 30 minutes after spraying. Best results is about 30 minutes later. Just be extremely careful when you pull the tape. It can, and most likely will, lift some paint around the edges.

Also, make sure you paint around you tape lines with the color surrounding the "To be painted area". The Nelson paint, as would any paint, will bleed under the tape due to the weave of the fabric. I paint the tape down to seal it, wait about 10 minutes, then paint the new color.

Additionally, I have tried brushing the paint on, spraying with my touchup gun (Sata MiniJey IV 1.2 SA Tip), and spraying with my Iwata Kustom CS Airbrush (0.5 Tip) and received by far the best results with the touchup gun. The paint likes to be put on in a light coat to start then a wet, but not too wet, second, third, fourth........ coat. The airbrush puts out too little paint and too much air resulting in a sandpaper like finish. The touchup gun makes for an extremely smooth finish.

I thinned the paint for the touchup gun about 4 parts paint to 1 part water. I also used the crosslinker as per instructions, 8 drops per oz I think.

SunDevilPilot

RE: Help With Covering
 

Thanks for the tips.

What are you using for masking tape ?

RE: Help With Covering
 

Masking - 3M Fine Line for edges and regular painters tape to fill in the area outside the fine line.

Don't omit the spraying of the surrounding color over the tape. Reguardless of tape type it will bleed, trust me!


SunDevilPilot

RE: Help With Covering
 

OK. Will do.

RE: Help With Covering
 

Tom,

What colors are you spraying?

SunDevilPilot

RE: Help With Covering
 

i'll be spraying MonoKote Red and a dark blue. Jerry suggested that I spray the airframe with white, first, to get everything one color, under the red.

RE: Help With Covering
 

Should turn out nice.

The paint is good but it does take a little practice to figure out how best to apply it.

I went with the Nelson Paint as more of an experiment than anything. The Cub I am painting is electric so no real fuelproofing was needed. I like the results but doubt I will use Nelson Paint again. Just too hard to use in comparison to automotive style paint. It requires numerous coats to get good coverage. The Olive Drab was more of a transparent paint than I expected.

For my next plane I am going to try Auto-Air Colors. I would like to try a base / clear two part paint so see if it is easier to apply.

http://www.autoaircolors.com/

SunDevilPilot

RE: Help With Covering
 

After spending 30 years in paint manufacturing, I try to stay away from industrial paints. I've spent way too much time breathing those vapors !! LOL

I've successfully painted, using WarbirdColors, which applys in a similar fashion to the Nelson product.

Jerry Nelson told me that he has better luck with new painters, because of his pain't different application techniques. New painters have no experience to fall back on. If that makes sense.

I don't mind the multiple coats. I figure that I can spray the white under coat and the red in the same day. Because of the need to mask the complicated color scheme, I doubt that I'll get the blue sprayed the same day.

On my Stuka, painted with WBC, we masked and painted 3 colors in one day, but that was a less involved color scheme. On it, I added the fourth color, (Winter White camo), at a later date.


Edit: I should've clicked on your link before posting. I like waterborne paints. I'll check it out before painting my next project.