I am TRYING to cover the control surfaces on my TopFlight P-40. The plane is glassed and will be painted. I am attaching the Koverall with Sig StixIt.
The problem: When I try to trim the Koverall I wind up with "threads" and "fuzzys". They will not sand off cleanly and even using a new #11 blade I can not get the cloth to cut clean.
How do you get this stuff to cut cleanly ? I have never had this problem using Coverite or SolarTex.
You need to use a cutting board and rotary (OLFA) cutter as the dressmakers use. You can purchase at a crafts store or dressmaker store. If you are going to do a lot of covering this way, get the 24 " plastic ruler as well. For trimming once it is in place, buy an OLFA box cutter and get a pack of the LBB blades. They are blue colour rather than silver and are, by far, the sharpest blade I have every used incl. #11 blades. A couple more tips: Let's say you are covering the horizontal stab. Cut the material a little oversized. Iron it flat to one side of the stab. Now take a piece of spruce as long as the stab length and about 3/8" square. Lay this flush along the edges of the stab and use it as a guide to run your rotary cutter along. This will give you exactly the length (flap) of material you need to fold over and iron down. So far, no pulls, tears or loose threads. Now for the final trick. As you use your iron to stick this flap, use a rolling motion over and around the stab edge. If you use the customary iron down sliding movement of the iron, you will pull all kinds of threads off. Using Koverall with iron on adhesives is not the easiest thing but a bit of practice will give it to you. BTW, I am not sure where you are, but you might check at your local Home Depot or Canadian Tire store for some LePage's green contact cement. This is a water based product. No smell and goes on like water. Use this in place of Stixit. Works much better. Unfortunately, I don't think this product is available in the US but you could ask.
Any other questions, drop me an e-mail and I will try and help. Gord Schindler MAAC6694
"Ted Campanelli" wrote in message news:hSx_b.17358$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr31.news.prodigy.com...
That's because Coverite and *-Tex are mylar film material. Koverall is real fabric. Use thin CA to wet the edges of the material. When it is dry, you will be able to cut a nice smooth edge. Same with sanding, fill it with CA/paint/dope/filler and sand away. Dr.1 Driver "There's a Hun in the sun!"
What Paint you using? What I have found with Koverall and dope is, I use very thin dope around the edge I want to cut. Dries quick and cuts nice and clean with a good pair of shears. Then I iron that edge of fabric down, it will stick to the dope already on the framework. As with the fuzzies and a stray piece of fabric here and there, it will sand off with the primer coats as has been said. rick markel
Is it really a fabric or a film with a fabric weave embossed on it? I'll take a second look at my rolls, if you will. Dr.1 Driver "There's a Hun in the sun!"
I cut a small piece to play with as I've never used Solartex before. It definately leaves threads hanging out when it is torn. Yes. the back is shiney, but look closely and you can see the weave in the adhesive.
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