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Tempest fuselage repair advice please :-)
- Thread starter crispy
- Start date
Oh no! Looks like it broke completely off?!
You could probably try a similar technique as I used for my Alpina repair. My damage was far less, but you appear to have much better access to the damage area.
Make a fixture/jig to firmly hold the two sections in alignment.
Grind the fuse shell thickness down from the inside, gradually across a couple inches on either side of the break so that the shell thickness tapers from full thickness a couple inches away from the break, down to say, 1/2 thickness at the break and then rebuild the shell thickness with glass cloth patches with alternating biases. Do the same on the outside.
While you’re working on the inside, you can seal off the exterior surface with painters tape. Ideally remove the tape when the inside layers are still in the green state and continue building up the exterior shell thickness .
Feather the edges of the new glass fiber into the old fuselage glass to reduce stress risers. Glazing putty works well for correcting any minor exterior surface imperfections.
You could probably try a similar technique as I used for my Alpina repair. My damage was far less, but you appear to have much better access to the damage area.
Make a fixture/jig to firmly hold the two sections in alignment.
Grind the fuse shell thickness down from the inside, gradually across a couple inches on either side of the break so that the shell thickness tapers from full thickness a couple inches away from the break, down to say, 1/2 thickness at the break and then rebuild the shell thickness with glass cloth patches with alternating biases. Do the same on the outside.
While you’re working on the inside, you can seal off the exterior surface with painters tape. Ideally remove the tape when the inside layers are still in the green state and continue building up the exterior shell thickness .
Feather the edges of the new glass fiber into the old fuselage glass to reduce stress risers. Glazing putty works well for correcting any minor exterior surface imperfections.
Make some custom sanding sticks with bent ends to allow u to grind down the inner surface while the sanding stick’s handle sticks out of the hatch area. Epoxy brush bent 45deg about a 1/4” from where the bristles begin makes it easier to stipple down the cloth/resin.
The most time consuming part for me was re-aligning the fuse and stabilizing the distorted sections. The grinding and patching was surprisingly quick/easy
The most time consuming part for me was re-aligning the fuse and stabilizing the distorted sections. The grinding and patching was surprisingly quick/easy
gp49
Very Strong User
Some of the best repairs on molded gliders I have seen are made by a guy in Japan. He goes by 'ninjasloper' on YouTube and 'sanukiudon on rcgroups. If you go thru his videos and post you will see lots really good tooling he made for fuse alignment and other components that he fixes. He is a really good craftsman. After seeing his fuse jig I made one really similar but from aluminum. Works really well
You can temporarily join the aligned half's with CA
Here are some of the links:
one of his fuse repairs:
You can temporarily join the aligned half's with CA
Here are some of the links:
one of his fuse repairs:
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