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Striping the blue

jsenft

Well Known Member
I have been removing the blue protective film around the rivets as I build my plane. I have been experimenting on trying to improve the process. I currently use a 1700 Watt solder iron. However, the heat dissipates so fast creating the blue strips is still challenging and time consuming. Besides taking off all the blue protective film, as anyone found a better more reliable technique to remove the blue from the rivet zone?
 
1700w? The one I use is about 40w and does a good job. It has a fine, rounded tip, and you need to move it quite slowly to get good separation.
 
Dug around and found the kids' old woodburning kit. Rounded and smoothed the flat angled tip and it worked like a charm.
 
??

I am curious why you leave the blue plastic on. Do you intend to polish instead of paint? If you are not going to polish, it gets much more difficult to remove over time, risks trapping moisture and causing corrosion and you will be scuffing the surface before paint anyway.
 
I'm kinda new at this myself and here's what I've experienced.

First off, I had originally intended to do the full stripping routine on all assemblies, the reason being that since I have no prior metalworking history I felt it would guard against accumulating nicks and dings due to the inevitable excessive handling.

As it turns out, the learning curve has been steeper than I anticipated, and starting with the second wing I now immediately remove the vinyl film as the first step of the process. My confidence level has become sufficient that I feel the extra protection is superfluous and unnecessarily time consuming. Each builder has to decide what his/her comfort level is.

The stripping operation is fairly straightforward. The previous advice about softening the soldering iron tip is absolutely critical. Utterly smooth and blunt is paramount. A run of the shop 40-50W iron will do.

I don't do such a great job at freehanding straight lines, so I went with a straightedge (neatnik syndrome). Therein lies a hidden trick. I watched a video of the stripping being done where the builder used a metal straightedge, and was appalled at how agonizingly slow it went. The metal was sucking almost all the heat out of the iron tip. I went to a hobby/craft store and bought a sheet of 1/64 birch ply veneer for a few bucks, cut a 3/4" wide strip out of it, drilled a cleco hole in one end, and went to town. Works great.

The safety tip for using it is always to keep your positioning hand away from the iron's immediate proximity in case it hops up on top of the straightedge. It never happened to me but certainly could have.

Lastly, do not exert any more pressure than is just adequate to keep the iron against the part. It's the heat the does the work. The result you see as you move the iron along will tell you how fast to go. The goal is as fast as possible without leaving any part of the line unmelted. You will quickly learn what it should look like.

You will no doubt notice where strips intersect there appears to be a scratch in the Alclad surface made by the iron. Odds are it only looks like a scratch, but is instead a very thin thread of melted vinyl which rubs right off.

End of essay...happy building.
 
I use a Weller 140/100 watt, smoothed the tip and use a straight edge. Takes only a light touch and seldom do I leave a mark on the skin.

Brad has a point and I'm sure this topic could be or has been like debating the primer wars. But, I have not had a hard time taking it off even after 4 years.

I don't see any corrosion but my hangar is insulated and tight. Might well be a problem in Florida??
 
John made a great explanation and is correct about it only looking like a scratch. Usually rubs right off unless you apply way more pressure than needed.
 
This is why I love this group.

I don't do such a great job at freehanding straight lines, so I went with a straightedge (neatnik syndrome). Therein lies a hidden trick. I watched a video of the stripping being done where the builder used a metal straightedge, and was appalled at how agonizingly slow it went. The metal was sucking almost all the heat out of the iron tip. I went to a hobby/craft store and bought a sheet of 1/64 birch ply veneer for a few bucks, cut a 3/4" wide strip out of it, drilled a cleco hole in one end, and went to town. Works great.

This is a great hint. I burned myself several times trying to hold a metal ruler. I will be making this this weekend.
 
I use cheap 1/2 inch masking tape (beige color) and center it over a line of rivet holes. It only takes a couple of minutes to tape a panel. I use a 40 W iron with a rounded tip to trace the tape edges. This helps with concentration on the iron cutting rate for a clean melt. Nice part is pulling the tape helps remove the blue plastic at the same time.

John Salak
RV-12 #120116
 
What? I can't prime with the blue still on??:confused:

Kind of like the warning on the box of a new clothes iron that says don't iron clothes while wearing.
 
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