Repair of fuselage lower aft stringer

[MarkD 53]

I broke the stringer under the tail of my Flyer. The description of how I managed to do this is posted in my "Yup, I did a Dumb" thread.  This is documentation of how I repaired the damage. 

 

There are a lot of pictures of the process I went through to accomplish the repair.

 

First I removed the damaged fabric just enough to see what I was going to have to do. then I removed the broken wood stringer pieces.  I made a new stringer section and used epoxy to attach some wood doublers to each end of the replacement strip.

 

  

 

I had to open the fabric up some more to be able to clamp the replacement section in place while the epoxy set up.  The holes ended up being a bit larger than I had originally hoped they would be. 

 

 

After removing the clamps and a little sanding I removed the paint around the edge of the holes in the fabric with MEK to be able to bond the replacement fabric to the original fabric. 

 

 

I glued on new fabric with POLY-TACK fabric cement.  After the cement dried the new fabric was ironed to draw it   tight.

 

 

After ironing the fabric tight POLY-BRUSH was applied and finishing tapes were applied to all edges of the repair.

 

 

More POLY-BRUSH over tapes to fill the weave then 2 coats sprayed on.  Two coats of POLY-SPRAY (silver for UV protection) after the POLY-BRUSH had flashed off.  Wet sanded then added two more coats.

 

 

After the POLY-SPRAY had dried enough the repair was painted with two coats of POLY -TONE 105 White.  The original fabric and paint was applied in 2000, 15 years ago, still looks good and is repairable.

 

 

This is why I personally like the POLY-FIBER process.  The repair was fairly simple and the only really difficult part was working over my head laying on the trailer.  While I was at it I added another inspection ring so I can get to the elevator push-pull rod bushings buried in the aft portion of the fuselage for lubrication and inspections.

 

MarkD

 

 

[Av8r_Sed 82]

Kudos to you, Mark. Way to get on a repair! I can sure see the merits of a polytone finish. With Aerothane, I'd still be thinkink about how to blend it in (though not as much on the bottom of the fuse).

[Av8r3400 1179]

Great job to make the oops go away!

I'll second the emotion on the ease of Poly Fiber repairs, especially with 'tone paint.

[RobS 52]

Really nice work!

[EDMO 1078]

I wasn't around when my buddy repaired the J3 wing, but he said it was very easy to repair the fabric with Stewarts finish. He has done other finish repairs before. I could ask him for more details if anyone wants to know.

EdMO

Edited 13 Sep 2015 by Ed In Missouri

[C5Engineer 1170]

Did you have some poly fiber materials laying around or did you buy a repair kit? I have a few small things I'd like to do to mine but I have zero usuable covering supplies leftover and buying even the smallest available is still spendy!

[1avidflyer 1983]

What exactly do you need Joey, I have lots of polyfibre stuff, and lots of stuff to cover, but might be able to send something your way. Jim Chuk

[MarkD 53]

Joey,

 

I had some material left over from a recent RANs S-6S I built for my Father-In-Law.  I usually try to keep some material on hand just in case for situations like this.  I will end up ordering a bit more to replenish what I used this time though.  I order the liquids a quart at a time except for the reducer (always get a gallon of reducer).  If I'm in a hurry I can get it at one of the local airports here but it sure is a lot more than ordering from Spruce.

 

MarkD  

[KFfan 151]

Thanks for the write-up and photos.

Pretty much reinforces my thinking about the repair I need to make to my rudder fabric.

 

Lou