Replace fabric with glass

Ernest Christley wrote:

Corky Scott wrote:

Are you trying to save money or weight, or both? When you wet out the
fiberglass fabric, it sometimes takes a lot of primer to fill the
weave, depending on the weight of the cloth. That could make for a
looonnnnggggg time of finishing to make it look good.


Doubt it would be any cheaper. Thought it could be a little lighter.

I guess a benefit would be a simplification in this project. I'm
already having to do a lot of fiberglass work with the wings and
turtleback. The fabric is a whole 'nuther skill set, tool set, and
chemical set. The fabric entails, gluing, shrinking, fabric-riveting
(which I understand is slightly different than metal riveting) then
filling the weave. While maybe all minor skills, they are all something
to be learned and all have their set of pitfalls. For instance, I've
been warned that when sanding the primer, the abrasive pad can easily
slice through the fabric at the edges of ribs or other hard supports.

I'm already doing the FG thing, so I'd get to amortize the learning
curve a little more. As I understand it, a 2oz fine-weave cloth doesn't
need much filling and if you wet it out on plastic, it won't need any.
It will come out as smooth as the plastic. The process would boil down
to wet out the glass between 2 sheets of plastic, pull of the top sheet
and wrap the rest around the part to be covered. Scuff sand and and
it's ready for paint.

I'm really not that concerned about strength, other than the FG is so
much stronger that you should be able to size it down accordingly.
Whichever type you choose, the resulting coverings weight will be
determined in large part by how thick the fabric was to begin with. It
seems that a thinner fabric wouldn't need as much filler to get 'full'.
And 2oz FG has got to be thinner than 4oz polyester. The comments
have been that the Razorback system is heavy, and I don't understand why
that should be. Why not use a thinner fabric since it has the strength
to spare?

--
http://www.ernest.isa-geek.org/
"Ignorance is mankinds normal state,
alleviated by information and experience."
Veeduber



Glass is a highly frangible material compared to polyester.
It is strong, yes, but brittle.

While tensile strength is a good thing, it is not the only thing
we need to consider.

My new plane is covered with 1.7 ounce dacron and Poly Fiber finish.
For a lightly loaded, low speed plane, this is quite adequite.

3.2 ounce fabric is twice as strong.
Why _not_ use it? (trick question!)

Because it's FOUR times heavier when finished?


Richard