Hi guys. . .I have just finished up my 21st scratch-built GENIE. This is an original design, vacuum-bagged, thermal competition ship on which the prototype was built 8-9 years ago. See pics of a couple at http://www.proptwisters.org/genie/genie.html. While bagging the wing, I tried a couple of ideas not heard about before that those who still build may like to know about. As I have often done, I trimmed the cores for a LE of 1/4" harder balsa to shape to core contours. I then pre-glassed them using the 1" x .003" fiberglas tape I got from CST. I attached the tape with 3M77, brushed on bagging resin, smoothed it uniformly and let it cure. The next step is what I did differently. I wanted to protect the fine finish on the LE from being messed up during bagging to cut down on the "touch up" work. To this end, I found some 1/2" wide color-coded electrical tape (Action brand from National Tape Corp., New Orleans, item #7076A). I placed a length of this tape, sticky side down, on a long piece of plate glass, waxed the other side, then carefully centered it on LE. I positioned the waxed/painted carriers to extend about half way over the 1/4" LE. As hoped for, the excess epoxy and layup extended partly over the LE, but did not adhere to the waxed tape. After cutting off the unwanted overlap, I peeled the 1/2" tape off and to my great joy, had a smooth LE, free of pits, bubbles and unwanted epoxy, one like never before. With careful masking of adjacent areas, I feathered the layup to the pre-glassed LE, preparatory to masking to apply a painted finish to the LE. It looks nice! The other different thing done was this; I replaced a section of each extreme tip of the cores with sort of pie-shaped pieces of balsa. I ran the grain span-wise to get rigidity not provided by foam. These balsa pieces were shaped to match the removed pieces of core and to give a "tip-like" shape, birds-eye view. However, they ended with abrupt vertical edges, thus imparting no compound curves the carriers could not conform to. The carriers and layup were sized to end at the vertical edges. After bagging, there was a perfectly-painted layup to the vertical edge. After sanding the edges smooth, still in the vertical, a "V" groove was filed into the balsa edges. A finished, rounded edge was then created by pressing some of Taylor Collin's (Soaring Stuff) 2 part epoxy putty into the groove and working it to perfectly fill to the upper and lower edges of the painted skins. A strip of vinyl masking tape was placed on both painted surfaces at the extreme edges to keep the putty off the paint. This 2-part putty comes in a wiener-sized roll from which you slice off a piece to knead with thumb and finger to mix. The brown mix slowly hardens, giving ample time to shape with fingers, trim with Exacto or razor blade and ultimately fine-sand with wet/dry paper. The bagged, painted area was then masked to spray paint the putty to look integral. In appearance, the tips rival those of a molded wing. Harley Michaelis, LSF023, 26 S. Roosevelt, Walla Walla, WA 99362, ph. ((509) 529-2562. RDS website: http://www.proptwisters.org/rds2/ RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
