Bonding skins with an Adhesive Wiper

Forums: 

From: Jim Nordin <panelmaker [at] earthlink.net>
Sender: <marv [at] lancaironline.net>
Subject: Bonding skins with an Adhesive Wiper
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 08:02:00 -0400
To: <lml [at] lancaironline.net>

On bonding skins …

 

Make a “wiper” wider than the caps/spar by a little. But it
should be nearly parallel to the cap/spar at the edges and maybe 3/16” or
less high in the middle. If you’re not confy with the middle make it
taller. Since this runs across the cap and nothing is yet touching the area of
the wing skin that will be laying on the epoxy (structural adhesive) on the
cap, you can take and rough up that area a little and squeegee just a little
bit of structural adhesive over/onto it. Now apply additional epoxy and wipe it
with the adhesive wiper. Remove excess.  

 

Then put the two pieces together. Weight the skin down with plenty
weight.

After cure, you can look inside the wing with a mirror or scope and see
exactly how much squeeze out you have and sleep at night. This method does make
a nice job – perfect squeeze out for me was a bead of epoxy that was a
little smaller than a lead pencil all around the joint.

 

I made my wiper out of spare 1/16” plastic. Or you can make it
out of a 1/16” glass layup or what ever makes you happy.

 

Jim

Post a Reply

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Each email address will be obfuscated in a human readable fashion or, if JavaScript is enabled, replaced with a spam resistent clickable link. Email addresses will get the default web form unless specified. If replacement text (a persons name) is required a webform is also required. Separate each part with the "|" pipe symbol. Replace spaces in names with "_".
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h1> <h2> <h3>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Each email address will be obfuscated in a human readable fashion or, if JavaScript is enabled, replaced with a spam resistent clickable link. Email addresses will get the default web form unless specified. If replacement text (a persons name) is required a webform is also required. Separate each part with the "|" pipe symbol. Replace spaces in names with "_".
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Attachments
Files must be less than 512 MB.
Allowed file types: jpg jpeg gif png txt doc docx xls xlsx pdf ppt pptx pps ppsx odt ods odp mp3 mov mp4 m4a m4v mpeg avi ogg oga ogv weba webp webm.