Fiberglass question

[Charles in SC]

I am fitting my empanage fairing. There is an area on both sides of the vertical fin that do not follow the curvature real well. My choices that I know of to improve the looks of this are:

1. I can cut it apart and re build it with the proper contours. This would take a while.

2. I understand that I can heat it with a heat gun and reshape it some. I do not know if I can shape it enough, I have never done this.

My question is this, if I heat and reshape it will it stay in that shape or will there be a "memory" in it that might make it return to its original shape at some later time?

Thanks in advance!

[Vansconvert]

You can get a lot of movement out of it with a heat gun. But you have to be carefull not to burn right through it.

Apply a little bit of heat at a time and then with sheet metal pliers, give it a little nudge to see if you can bend it. A little more heat and try to bend it. Repeat until you can.

Then, bend a little past where you would like it, hold it with the pliers for a few minutes until it cools down. It will stay right where it is once it is room temp again.

You can do this 2 or 3 times to get it where you want it.

Just take the heat up a little at a time and apply a little tension at a time to see where you are at with it.

[Kyle Boatright]

Originally Posted by Charles in SC

I am fitting my empanage fairing. There is an area on both sides of the vertical fin that do not follow the curvature real well. My choices that I know of to improve the looks of this are:

1. I can cut it apart and re build it with the proper contours. This would take a while.

2. I understand that I can heat it with a heat gun and reshape it some. I do not know if I can shape it enough, I have never done this.

My question is this, if I heat and reshape it will it stay in that shape or will there be a "memory" in it that might make it return to its original shape at some later time?

Thanks in advance!

Can you post a picture? A big of sanding or a bit of filler might resolve the problem.

[bruceh]

The heat gun will get you about 80% of the way there. It does help where the fiberglass piece has just a little bit to move over a large area. I ended up cutting off the part of the empennage fairing that wraps over the HS leading edge on the under side. I put some new layers of fiberglass on there and then filled, sanded and it looks perfect now.

I started with this.


And this.


Before heat gun.


And after heat gun.


Here is a view of the underside relief cut, with some plastic modeling clay prior to doing the layups.


Lots more photos here. I had some other work with the VS fit, which is also detailed in the same photo gallery.

[Charles in SC]

Thanks for the replies and pictures, I have several ideas about what to do. I have some scrap glass pieces I am going to play around with the heat gun. I know that I can fit by cutting and redoing, the only thing is that every thing seems to take me 10 times longer to do because I tend to be to picky about the results sometimes. I do not think the heat gun is going to give me the results I want but it is just a way of doing things I have not ever tried.

[bret]

I too cut and glased in the HS part, then got way too invloved and spent one month on it. Took a lot of time to make it look fitted.

[deek]

I've helped several RV'ers try to bring the kit provided glass into conformance, but found after 2-3 planes it's much easier and faster to pour foam and layup in place instead of fighting the poor fitting glass. If you are going to try this I suggest you find a EZ/Cozy builder to show you how; it's quite simple if you've done this kind of work previously.

[Charles in SC]

I thought I would post what I finally did to fit this part.
After studying it for a couple of weeks I took the screws out where it did not fit the HS, then I put a heavy weight on it to hold the fiberglass where I wanted it. I used a lead ingot that I had lying around, I do not know where you can get one of these. It was in a garage after some renters moved out. It weighs about 40 lbs. With the weight in place I heated the web area between the screw flanges with a heat gun until it laid down the way I wanted it to and let it cool. It had occured to me that with heat the web area might flex enough to allow the screw flange to lay down flat. It took a couple of tries to get it all worked down but I am happy with it now.