USMC07Seghetti

I am completely new to kits and R/C glow powered aircraft. I am covering with monokote (yea I know, not that good/easy for begginers to start out with) and am so far impressed by my work. When I covered the stabilizer (horizontal), it went on almost perfectly. I had a couple small wrinkles after I ironed it, and the heat gun took care of all of them.
But when I covered the vertical fin, I ended up with a few minor wrinkles (mabye major??) and thought the heatgun would take care of them.
I am able to get a few out at a time, but dont want to burn a hole in the covering, as I have done it twice when covering the stabilizer (pulled it off and put a new layer on).
The technique I use when I have wrinkles is to iron over/hover the wrinkles and then hit them with the heat gun. This seems to work, but not always effective. Is this a good way to approach wrinkles, or should I re-cover it?

I attached a pic of what I am talking about, it is near the rudder where the few wrinkles are. They seem to not come out.

*JCB*

My Feedback: (9)

those are, what i like to call, "high-heat wrinkles" - sometimes it seems as if monokote needs to be set on fire to get stubborn wrinkles out...I just got done covering a plane in monokote and went through the same thing you are dealing with.

Start at one edge of the wrinklel, heat until it starts to shrink (Rember to keep the heat gun moving) and then work your way through the rest of that wrinkle.

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

This what I do in cases like this. Don't start out heating directly over the wrinkles, as you will usually never get them out this way. You have to think of the covering as and entire piece, because it does stretch and pull the entire piece when you heat it. Using your heat gun start out heating the material AS FAR AWAY from your wrinkles as you can get. You'll see the covering change color slightly and start to shrink. Now continue to heat and work your way towards the wrinkles. As you do this you should see the wrinkles starting to pull out as you work the covering. Continue this until you are over the wrinkles, now heat that area and you should see all of the wrinkles pull out. If they don't do it the first time repeat this process. Doing this you should be able to get them worked out.

One quick tip, never ever use the covering iron until you are completely satisfied with how the covering has shrunk down. The reason for this is because as soon as you use the covering iron you are adhering the covering to the surface below it. It will then be glued in place and you won't be able to work out wrinkles, or do more stretching, any longer. After you have the covering shrunk to you satisfaction then you can iron it down.

Hope this helps

Ken

USMC07Seghetti

Thanks JCB and RCKen for your help/tips. I will try it out and hopefully get them out. I will keep the gun moving, that is the one thing I was having a problem with when i burnt the holes in a couple times.
Other than that, I am not having any more trouble with Monokote.

MinnFlyer

My Feedback: (4)

What Ken is saying is very true.

Think of it this way:

If you had a sheet laying on a bed and it had a wrinkle in the center, you wouldn't rub your hand over the wrinkle to smooth it out, you would pull on the edge of the sheet. Right?

It's the same with covering.