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Hey guys. I've got a question regarding wing "waviness". I've got an
LS1f with very good gelcoat condition. However, if I look down the wing long-ways, just above the leading edge I can see what looks like a series of 4"-6" diameter lumps (for lack of a better term). They're somewhat regularly spaced along the full length of both wings and are parallel to the leading edge. They are very, very subtle, and you can't really see them without looking from the correct angle to use the glossy reflection. They're very similar on both wings and are in the 4"-8" range up from the leading edge. I've done some "tap tests" to see if I could detect delamination, but the wing surface is consistently solid all over. I'm thinking this might be gelcoat "sag" and/or just improper sanding during the last refinish. Do refinishers have rigs to "rotate" the wings (on the spar) as they're spraying? It almost seems like after spraying the top of the wings, they were rotated to a position where this point of the wing was the lowest allowing sag there. Anyone have any thoughts or comments as to what this might be? Besides these defects, the rest of the wing surfaces are consistently smooth and uniform. The description of the wing refinish in the log indicates the following: - acrylic enamel (from previous refinish) and factory gel coat removed via sanding - primed with Simtec primer - sanded with 100 grit - primed again with Simtec primer - sanded with 120 grit - series of coats of Simtec white to thickness of 6-8 mils - sanded with 180 grit - series of coats of Simtec white to thickness of 8 mils - wet sanded with 1000 grit - wet sanded with 1200 grit - wet sanded with 1500 grit - power buffer with 3M finesse #1 - power buffer with 3M finesse #2 There's nothing in the log that refers to profiling or shaping. Only "sanding" and "polishing". If any attempts were done to shape and/or profile, do you think that would have been logged along with the rest of the description? There's two and a half pages devoted to this refinish job, so it's not like he left much out. The ship flies beautifully, and sure seems to have good legs relative to it's published performance numbers. I don't think these surface defects are pronounced enough to be having any large effect on performance, but I haven't tried any serious attempts at performance testing either. At this time I guess I'm more interested in knowing what they are. Although there will probably come a time when I'd like to remedy it for the performance improvements if there are any to be had. Thanks, Dave |
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