Plastic Strapping
The wings and fuselage are strengthened by runs of 1/2″ wide plastic strapping. Here are some tips that I gathered after doing the wing:
- Make sure you get the strapping to lay flat on your work surface before you apply it. It it wont lay lay by itself its going to have enough force to curl away from the foam.
- Find the middle of the strapping and crease it! This stuff doesn’t go around corners very well so you have to bend it where it turns at the centre of the wing..
- You need tape to hold it down, particularly if you use Polyurethane glue. However, you can remove the tape once the glue had dried. It won’t adhere well because there is no adhesive on the rest of the foam. You can then sand over the strapping area for a really smooth finish.
- Don’t forget to sand the tape.
I’m not sure Polyurethane is the best glue for this and it tends to push the strapping away from the foam as it cures. The tape I uses didn’t adhere well enough to keep it held down. On the underside of the wing I used too much glue and it bubbled up in some places. Luckily I caught it and pushed it back down before it cured that way.
By the time I did the fuselage I had it down. The only different with the fuse is that there are no channels cut into it to guide you. On the up side you can sandwich it with anything moderately heavy you have lying around to make a tight bond. I’m gonna play with this technique when I do the sport wing. I think with a bit of parchment paper and the wing saddles you could get perfect strapping tape application, more on that later.
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