In article ,
Ernest Christley wrote:

Most of the fabric covered aiplanes I've seen didn't seem that hard.
That is, you could walk up to them and push the fabric in with your
hand. The way I understand the fabric process, it is basically a
composite structure. You have a nylon cloth with a paint "epoxy".

Could a much stronger and lighter covering be made by wetting out some
2.5oz glass cloth on plastic, waiting till it's tacky and then wrapping
it around the airframe? The epoxy would be much lighter than paint, and
fiberglass cloth is MUCH stronger than nylon.

I've seen some places where builders used composites in place of fabric,
and it seemed that they all aimed for a multlayer, stiff panel, putting
the weight far above the original. I just don't understand why?



There have been some fibreglass/dope coverings around for at least 45
years. I remember a couple of Stearmans that the University of Illinois
had that were covered in glass/acetate dope. They looked like wrinkled
shirts whenever theweather was coll & humid. I understand that CAB dope
works bettere here. The shrinkage of the butyrate dope provides the
taughtness that the fabric needs.

Another disadvantage of this process is weight -- glass weighs more than
Dacron.

The glass process is also more susceptable to "ringworm" -- little
ring-shaped cracks in the finish.

As others have posted, fabric provides very little in the way of
structural loads -- all it really does is help to provide aerodynamic
shape.