Lower Aileron V

11/6/2005

After the skin had cured at the leading edge [lowe ailerons IV], I then scratched my head for a while...wondering how to bend the skin over...

After initial tests, I decided not to glue the top skin in one go. When I tried to bend the skin all the way down, I could hear some creaks and groans in the ply. So I decided to glue half way across the radius of the ribs, invert the aileron, and as you can see by the pics, I used ratchet straps to force them down. This approach basically allows the skin to bend in two stages. The second stage being the final staple down of the end of the skin.

After curing, the final bend was glued and stapled down with scrap wood. There is still alot of pressure here, so I am going to leave this clamped up for 48 hours instead of 24.

On a side-note. I discovered when playing around with clear-coat, that it doesn't like to be in a styro-foam container for more than 25 mins or so...scared the crap out of me when from the corner of my eye I saw a feint whisp of smoke coming from the cup! As you can see by the picture, it got kinda funky and cured virtually immediately.