Chuck and Ryan's Build Tips

[Cubrath]

Very nice work!

[ceslaw]

Two little additions

Here are two little additions to the covering of the fuselage not specified by Cub Crafters. According the plans, the door opening is covered on the bottom and aft angled surfaces. The forward angled surface is not covered. It is simply painted with the rest of the plane. We wanted to assure that three surfaces of the door opening would match in texture and appearance, so we opted to cover the forward opening surface as well using a scrap of the light weight fabric.

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The stringer on the bottom of the fuselage ends abruptly just forward of the access panel. It makes a noticeable bulge in the fabric. Given its proximity to the ground and its exposure to grass and the like, we decided to add a tape to protect that area from potential abrasion.

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The fuselage is covered and pushed aside. The wings and tail feathers are next.

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[ceslaw]

Tail Feathers.

All five are rib stitched, so anti chafe tape was applied, a half inch longer on each end than the designated locations for the rib stitching

Stabilizers

Technique. Some are better than others. The end result may look the same, but some techniques make the job go faster and easier. After spending the better part of a day covering the rudder and one elevator, I tried some different techniques. The remaining three sections went faster.

The stabilizers use a plain piece of fabric rather than an envelope like the other three tail sections.

1. Lay the frame on the fabric so the hinge lines up with the seam in the center of the fabric. Cut out the openings for the hinge first, using the “H” cut, centered on the seam. Than clamp the fabric tightly in place at the ribs on the hinge side. No glue is applied to the hinge side of the elevator

2. Make sure the top surface is up and the bottom surface is down so that the leading edge seam will be on the bottom side when finished.

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3. Pull the fabric on the bottom snug and use the iron to preshrink it around the leading edge.

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4. Cut the fabric in preparation for gluing. Then put a narrow bead of Poly Tac near the base of the leading tube the full length of the tube and pull the fabric snuggly into place. This will leave most of the fabric to be glued sticking straight up. I found this easier than trying to glue the full vertical width of the fabric to the tube at one time.

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5. With the fabric now tacked, go back and glue the fabric in place in foot long sections, massaging it to get the glue smooth. Sometimes I slit the fabric in each section glued to make it easier. Then the usual touch up with the iron to set the glue.

6. The ends are easy. Pre cut the end pieces and glue them in to place.

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7. After the glue sets up, trim with a razor or exacto knife. I replaced the blade after each cut. It is amazing how quickly it dulls

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8. Touch up with an iron and the seam virtually disappears.

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9. Flip it over and to the same thing to secure the top piece in place, working from the bottom side.

[N867SP]

Very nice work!


Pete
CCK-1865-0078
️N9PW
Severna Park, MD
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[c130jake]

The next plane will go even faster. Looks good!

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

[Cubrath]

Chuck,

It looks good! One thing I would add going forward is don't go crazy with the anti-chafe tape. It's easy to turn your airplane into a mummie and the edges of the tape will show under the fabric. If you own it long enough to recover you will wish you didn't use any. There is some places you need it but the poly-fiber manual makes you want to put it on everything when it's not really necessary.

MR

[ceslaw]

Chuck,

It looks good! One thing I would add going forward is don't go crazy with the anti-chafe tape. It's easy to turn your airplane into a mummie and the edges of the tape will show under the fabric. If you own it long enough to recover you will wish you didn't use any. There is some places you need it but the poly-fiber manual makes you want to put it on everything when it's not really necessary.

MR

Good Point!

The Carbon Cub video seems to take a more spartan approach with the anti chafe tape. And with fabric rivets on the wings we are told to use NO anti chafe tape on the ribs.

Chuck

[ceslaw]

Elevators

1. One goal is to keep the sewn seam centered. After putting the cover on and aligning the seam, clamps were applied at each rib. Note the seam center line is actually one side of the quarter inch sewn seam. The fabric had a darker line making the center point making it easy to line up.

2. The fuselage end of the envelope is stitched about two inches too far. Pull it back on itself to determine how long a cut will be needed, then a single cut along the seam line only.

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3. The glued edges are straight, so rather than using a compass a straight line was marked and cut before the fabric was glued in place.

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4. Be sure and keep the final visible pinked seam edge on the bottom. Cub Crafters marked the fabric covers “right” and “Left” so that the envelope seam would also be on the bottom.

5. I shrunk the fabric in increments: 250, than 300, than 350 degrees, going back and forth from side to side in an effort to keep the seam on the leading edge centered.

Rudder

1. Don’t forget to place the strobe light wire. It is held in place with three wraps of friction tape in three locations per the lighting manual.

2. Glue was applied around the strobe light opening and permitted to dry before the fabric was applied. After the fabric was applied and shrunk, the glue was activated with MEK to help secure it in place. The opening was then cut, pie style, and the pieces glued in place. There is a lot of tension around the opening and I wanted to add a bit more glue to make sure the fabric stayed put.

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With the tail surfaces covered it is time to learn how to rib stitch.

[ceslaw]

Rib Stitching

There is a scene in the original Matrix movie in which Trinity needs to escape from the evil agents in a Huey helicopter, which she had never flown before. She calls the control center and asks them to upload a program for this aircraft into her brain, which they promptly do. Moments later she is flying it like a pro.

That describes the way I felt learning to rib stitch; something I had never done before. Only difference is it took me a couple of hours practicing on a test section watching a video in front of the television to ‘upload the program’ and finally master the technique. I need a faster brain.

Although I plan to fabric rivet the wings as per Cub Crafters current practice, the tail feathers have to be rib stitched. It took me about two hours per tail section or a total of ten hours. That seemed like a really long time.

Rib stitching is thoroughly covered in many places. I have only tips:

1. Rib stitch from the bottom of the tail surfaces. That way the top will have no knots visible and look perfect.

2. The ribs on the elevators are a quarter inch wide, so the 3/8” rib tape had to be cut to size. (Don’t tell me that there was a roll of quarter inch tape in one of those boxes that I overlooked. I don’t want to know).

I really dislike rib stitching and am sure glad this job is done. But they really look good, perfectly aligned, nice and flat.

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The dining room table makes a great place to rib stitch especially when it is freezing outside.

[ceslaw]

Tail feather tapes


Following the Cub Crafters rather than Poly Fiber’s guidelines, two coats of poly brush were brushed on where the tapes are to be applied. The tapes over the ribs were applied first, trimming the ends where they meet with a straight scissors so the seam would not show. Next the tapes around the perimeter were applied. And finally the grommets were Polybrushed in place.


The tapes are applied by brushing the Poly Brush on top of the tapes. After they are in place a fourth coat of Poly Brush is applied, per Cubcrafter’s practice.


The tapes around the perimeter of the elevators and rudder were stretched to make them lay flat per the award winning Mitch Travis video with one slight change. When ironing the tapes to make them lay flat, a piece of paper was placed between the tape and the Poly Brushed surface so the tapes would not stick. Both sides were ironed before Poly Brush was applied. This worked well.


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There is a trick to installing the grommet around the strobe taillight. Per Mitch, it is split in half and then Poly Brushed in place with the cut edge along the center seam of the rudder.

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The center edge was cut with a straight scissors before polybrushing it in place along the center seam.

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