I am looking for advice on the best way to repair the fabric tears on my free airplane. Subject airplane is an Acrosport 1 that had the landing gear collapse and departed the runway and blazed a trail through the sagebrush.
I have vacuumed the brush out of the inside of the wings and carefully inspected all the woodwork with an endoscope. I didn't find anything broken inside. One wingtip rib is damaged so there is a little wood repair. The main repair is several rips and punctures in the fabric and the rib bay I opened up to repair the tip rib.
I have never done fabric work and the Poly Fiber manual is thin on repair methods. Other sources I have talk about dope repairs and dope works a little differently. Photos of the problem areas follow.
I have a bunch of small ribs 1" to 3" long and a couple of bigger rips 8" to 9" long and the rib bay to close up. First I thought the thing to do is to sew the rips and then lay a patch on. The problem is that I won't be able to fully shrink the fabric patches once the are glued on. I can shrink them to 250 degrees but any higher temps will release the bond. Maybe 250 degrees is enough. Or I can pre shrink the patches and simply glue them on.
I am not sure how to do this. Any advice is much appreciated.
I have vacuumed the brush out of the inside of the wings and carefully inspected all the woodwork with an endoscope. I didn't find anything broken inside. One wingtip rib is damaged so there is a little wood repair. The main repair is several rips and punctures in the fabric and the rib bay I opened up to repair the tip rib.
I have never done fabric work and the Poly Fiber manual is thin on repair methods. Other sources I have talk about dope repairs and dope works a little differently. Photos of the problem areas follow.
I have a bunch of small ribs 1" to 3" long and a couple of bigger rips 8" to 9" long and the rib bay to close up. First I thought the thing to do is to sew the rips and then lay a patch on. The problem is that I won't be able to fully shrink the fabric patches once the are glued on. I can shrink them to 250 degrees but any higher temps will release the bond. Maybe 250 degrees is enough. Or I can pre shrink the patches and simply glue them on.
I am not sure how to do this. Any advice is much appreciated.