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Ripple on leading edge

S

spriteah

Active Member
Hello fellow builders. I have discovered a few slight ripples on the leading edge of my wing. I did not think that I have caused it but am after ideas as the best was to remove it? The ripple are slight depressions what when painted im sure will show up. I can access behind them at this time.

Dolley?

Someone mentioned using a spoon and grease and massaging skin until it looks correct. Any ideas appreciated.

Jim
Australia.
 
Find the cause

A reader's concept of what you have is dependent on individual imagination. I have never seen an RV-12 so I have no idea what is causing the condition but no one else is stepping forward I will throw out something that may help.

When I built our RV-6A I thought it was as good as I could make it, I had flown it for over a year and I just had it painted. I was quite proud of it. One guy at the airport who is a retired child genius engineer from General Motors came by and looked it over. He observed a wavy deformation in the wingskin at the outboard end and commented "I hate to see that" and said no more. Well being the accused OCD person that I am, that comment got filed in mental file of imperfections that I had to find a way to deal with even though the plane flew perfectly and the deformation was barely noticable. I went over and over the cause and effect posibilities and sometime later (a year?) I had an ocassion to remove my non-standard tip tanks which are partially secured be three 5/16" threaded rods/washers/nuts and a lot of facilitating hardware. I knew I had really torqued the outboard nuts on these rods to make sure the installation was solid and I had wondered if that was related to the problem. It was. When I reinstalled the tanks with the 48 #8 screws and the three rods I ran the outboard nuts and washers down tight but I did not continue to crank them down for an extra measure of compression which does nothing for the bending loads on this installation. The waves went away.

Something is causing your ripples and maybe a fellow RV-12 builder will step forward with a solution. The greasy spoon approach sounds like treating the symptom instead of the problem and you could stretch the skin in the process.

Bob Axsom
 
Last edited:
I agree John

Take a picture of the worst position you can get. Make sure it shows what you are concerned about. Far as I am concerned, the RV-12 has ripples all over it. This thin of metal is hard to get perfect. Sometimes where the skins overlap and are 3 deep, you get wrinkles and dimples and distortion. Include pictures. Ours might be worse !

John Bender
 
I agree with John. This plane is prone to ripples. I had some "oil canning" on the leading edge of my right wing after clecoing the leading edge and before I installed the rear skins. I took some of the clecos off and re-clecoed them from a different direction taking the slack in the metal out. This condition went away. I have found that it is best to poke the skin and really check for ripples and oil canning while the clecos are still in. I have corrected most of the problems by re-clecoing. The problem with oil canning in the tail is caused by something different and is covered in another thread.
 
I will try and upload a pic in the next day. What has occured is that there are three slight depressions in the skin on the leading edge. I was hoping to panel them out.

I have since had a metal worker look at it and say leave it along. The skin is already stretch and if you much with it all you will do is stretch it more.

My plane is to continue and hopefully correct it at the prep state before painting. ie filler/primer or something like that.

I appreciate it is hard for anyone to comment without the pics.

Cheers and thanks for the comments. And as others have said along the rivet lines of the wings you get slight depressions as the ribs are not true. THis I have just accepted. If I build a second one I will try to addresst this. It's all a big learning curve but fun!!!!!!

Jim T
Melbourne Australia.
 
spriteah said:
I will try and upload a pic in the next day. What has occured is that there are three slight depressions in the skin on the leading edge. I was hoping to panel them out.

I have since had a metal worker look at it and say leave it along. The skin is already stretch and if you much with it all you will do is stretch it more.

My plane is to continue and hopefully correct it at the prep state before painting. ie filler/primer or something like that.

I appreciate it is hard for anyone to comment without the pics.

Cheers and thanks for the comments. And as others have said along the rivet lines of the wings you get slight depressions as the ribs are not true. THis I have just accepted. If I build a second one I will try to addresst this. It's all a big learning curve but fun!!!!!!

Jim T
Melbourne Australia.
Click to expand...

I think most of us could replace your name above with our own say the same thing.
 
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