forward skin to rib contact

[rk2436]

It's hard to believe that after almost 20 years Sonex has never corrected the incorrect bend radius on the LE skins. Is the vertical stab Fiberglas tip still wongo too?????

[Area 51%]

For what it's worth, I used PVC and not steel pipe. It's world's cheaper for one thing. I also found that any contamination larger than what's comfortable in your eye will leave a mark on the skin. My first attempt was botched because of the roughness of the steel pipe, and because I laid the vacuum hose on top of the pipe. When atmospheric pressure took over, you could clearly see the corrugation from the vacuum hose in the skin. I drilled holes in the PVC to evacuate the air in my second attempt. All went very well.

Getting the pipe exactly on the bend tangent isn't all that critical if you've accounted for the upper-to-lower lengths of the skin. Nature will put the bend exactly half-way between the edges.

[wingnut99]

I hadn't considered using pvc but it would be much cheaper and all its doing is filling the gap inside the skin as the vacuum draws it around it. I'll try that first. I wonder if it would still be strong enough to press the skin into a LE wooden form as in the Tony Spicer method of would the 2x squish it and deform it enough to prevent it from pressing the skin into the form?

[peter anson]

I wonder if it would still be strong enough to press the skin into a LE wooden form as in the Tony Spicer method

Not a chance.

Peter

[wingnut99]

I pulled my forward wing skin off last weekend and finished bending it. The plans show it pre-bent to 100°. Honestly it's almost completely flat when you lay it down. There may have been 10° on each side of the bend but no more. Mine was bent pretty good after having it already installed but the vacuum bagging was slick. I bought a 10' X 1 1/4" galvanized gas pipe, marked the center of the line where the bend was supposed to be, laid down a doubled up sheet of plastic. Next I pulled the sides of the skin up toward eac other and taped them together. I had to repeat the process until I had a nice U shape with just a couple of inches seperating the 2 edges and taped the edges of the plastic to seal it. I used a couple of conduit straps to anchor the pipe down so the assembly couldn't move and also taped the sheet of aluminum to the pipe on the bottom ends for good measure. I wrapped one end around my shop vacation nozzle and used a long plastic wire tie to seal it up and flipped on the vacuum. 5 seconds later my skin had enough bend to fit the nose of the ribs with very little effort. I went ahead and vacuum bagged the other skin while I had the setup in place. I bought the steel pipe in case it didn't work and I had to go Tony Spicer on it. Now I'm going to be cheap and return the pipe. You can't tell it was even used. You gotta love YouTube. It worked just like in the video.