skylark-flier

You'd think that with nearly 60 years of model building under my belt I'd know what I'm doing - you'd be wrong.

I'm in the midst of rebuilding the front end of my 40-yr old CG Sr. Falcon - restoring the nose section mostly - from an incident a long time ago (like, about 35 yrs ago) when I lost much of the nose around the engine.

Pics of her as she is right now and has been for 35 yrs; factory pic of the type as she was originally, and will again be eventually:


Everything's out of the nose now, firewall's being replaced, much new wood in the nose, engine will be remounted upright - as she was when new. My only real issue with this project will come when I re-cover her. Does anyone know of a glue or coating that can be used on OLD wood that will help new monokote stick better? I was actually thinking of SIG Stix-it, which I've used on several planes that were covered with Koverall - would it also work with monokote or is there something better?

Another item I'll throw out there, just for thoughts and comments - the alternative to monokote would be a whole new covering with the aforementioned SIG Stix-it and Koverall, then she'd get a whole new paint (dope) job with new color pattern (not the factory pattern though).

This plane's been my #1 flier for decades. I'm just restoring her to "original" construction status.

52larry52

My Feedback: (1)

After doing all you can to clean the wood of any fuel soaking (alcohol, heat, K-2, etc.) spray the area with cheap lacquer hair spray, even a couple of coats. The Monokote will stick better with the lacquer under it. Also you, might try Monokote Trim Solvent.

Rodney

A trick I have found to be very good is to simply coat the area to be covered with any aliphatic glue (you can even thin it a bit with water first) and let it dry. Now you can cover with most any self adhesive covering that uses heat to attach it. In fact, aliphatic glue can be used to bind most materials by just coating one surface with the glue, let it dry, then put the two pieces together and apply heat. I've often attached wing rib strips to the ribs this way, just coat the rib edge with glue, let it dry, then iron on the rib strips.

jester_s1

The hairspray method works so well I use it all the time. On a new build, it glues down the fuzzies and dust that always remain on the wood and raises the grain just enough to give the adhesive a rough surface to stick to. If the balsa is particularly soft, the Monocote will even pull some off with it when you remove it unless you hit it with a heat gun to reactivate the adhesive as you pull.

skylark-flier

Thanks guys, I didn't think it would really be much more than these ideas, guess I just wanted to hear someone else say it too. Most all the oil-soaked wood is (or will be) gone - the entire engine compartment is being replaced, along with all balsa from just forward of the wing LE, just leaving the original ply interior siding and original hardwood engine mount extensions inside the fuel tank compartment. My issue is primarily the remainder of the fuse where the wood is almost "polished" from years (decades) of monokote coverings. I'm planning to remove the rest of the monokote from the fuse, sand it down a bit to get rid of the "polish", alcohol it and then sand the new front end to meld in with the rest. I like the aliphatic glue idea too, gonna go with that over the whole fuse (new & old wood) - then re-cover. Wings & tail will be left as is - they're just fine and the monokote on them is only about 13 yrs old.

Gotta tell ya, so far the hardest part of the whole thing has been rebending the main gear back into something resembling where it should be. 40 years of landings and running over rather rough ground had it bent back at a near 45 degree angle, it's almost vertical again now.

Thanks again.

52larry52

My Feedback: (1)

According to the landing gear information you just gave.....If you bend it forward 45 degrees now, it will be just right in another 40 years!

skylark-flier

It's unfortunate that I didn't take pics of the gear before I bent it back to a "straight out" configuration but these 2 pics do manage to convey a bit of how "swept" it was:



She also sat rather low to the ground, which meant that I was constantly tearing up the tail bottom on take-offs. Finally added a ply tail skid a fair number of years ago. She sits a whole lot higher now, enough that I'll have to change the nose gear - going for the Dubro strut:

All in all, there'll be no more replacing of tail balsa, no more (hopefully) repatching of monokote under the horizontal stabs (lotsa stones), and she'll look more like she did in April 1974.