Some simple covering

I took a long break from working on Goat to do other things.  Life.  The EC Goat guys beginning to cover helped encourage how far behind I have gotten.

One elevator half was prepped for covering a long while ago.  Unfortunately, I put the adhesive onto the surface and didn't do the covering.  After months of sitting, it seemed prudent to remove it and start over.  It took a LOT of rubbing with my fingers and some scraping to remove it all. Hours of work.  Don't leave work half completed...  Interestingly, the adhesive is like a very sticky goo.  You can get it off the surface of aluminum one little bit at a time.  It appears the adhesive works by being in shear and having ample overlapping surface area.

After clearing the old adhesive yesterday afternoon, I started anew this morning.  Put cloth tape over the sharp corners of rivets, tube edges, and bolts.  Add adhesive around the perimeter and let dry.  Place the fabric down gently into the dry adhesive on the first side and smooth out all wrinkles.  Iron down (~225F) around the edges, working out wrinkles.  This is the stage of the first photo.  Add adhesive around the edges again, letting dry.

 

Come back and trim the excess, then iron it down inside the perimeter.  Flip to the second side.  Add adhesive about 1" around the perimeter of the first side, let dry.  This is the second photo

Once that perimeter is dry, pull the fabric around and start working carefully to remove all wrinkles, using the iron to help shrink the edges.  Come back with pinked shears and trim to that same 1" overlap.  Iron down, and definitely remove all wrinkles.  Finally, add another layer of adhesive and wipe off while still aggressively wet.  Let dry, then do a final ironing over the overlap to set the adhesive, and do a final shrinking over the whole thing.

I also added reinforcements over the hinge eyebolt penetrations through the covering.  These were a circle traced onto fabric, cut out with pinking shears, and a small slit to slide over the eyebolt.  First slid this into position and traced the outline, then added adhesive to the skin fabric, then pushed the patch down into the wet fabric, wiping up excess.  After that dried, ironed down the patch into the adhesive, then add adhesive and wipe away excess.

This now completes the horizontal tail to include both the fixed and moving portions.  These need to be painted and they'll be ready to go.

Next up is probably the flaps.  Those should be easy, since they're just large rectangles.  Next is probably the ailerons, again because they're mostly just large rectangles.  No formal plans beyond that, lest I get ahead of myself!