Poly Fiber Aircraft Coatings

I was recently shopping for butyrate dope and picked up some brochures on the Poly Fiber line: Poly-Tone, Aero-Thane and Top Gloss.

Any experiences with these finishes here? TIA!

>I was recently shopping for butyrate dope and picked up some
>brochures on the Poly Fiber line: Poly-Tone, Aero-Thane and
>Top Gloss.
>
>Any experiences with these finishes here? TIA!
>
>Dennis
>:-)

Ron B.
F4Fguy

Dennis,

These are part of a product line developed for full scale aircraft. As such they work pretty well for our purposes.

I have direct experience only with the primer surfacer. This was a very positive one,it thins with water, lays down well, sands easily and has excellent adhesion to almost anything. It can be spotted and feathered to transparency. The only down side I found was weight. If you leave any more on than absolutely necessary, you'll rapidly gain weight. Then again this is also true of auto primer, which doesn't have as good feathering and adhesion.

I have several friends who also use the base colors and top coats, they like them very much for their handling and durability. One of them, Bob Van't Riet, builds large (1/6-1/4 scale) RC. Bob uses the entire product line including the dacron covering material. If his finishes are typical, then I'd have to say they are excellent products.

Thanks, Ron!

I was concerned about the weight, but had a chance to look at a couple of private planes painted with the Poly-Tone, and just a couple of coats provide terrific coverage.

Another down side might be that they're not very high gloss, which may be a reason for including the Top Gloss in the product line.

I'm told that quite a few RC modelers in this area use the Poly-Tone, and rather assumed its probaly on the larger models.

LAST EDITED ON Oct-18-06 AT 01:20 AM (CST)
 
I purchase a gallon of Poly Fiber Nitrate from club member, Dave Shirely. I just started using it on my new model. The coverage and adhesion is great. One coat of this stuff look like 2 or 3 of Sig's Nitrate. I don't know about the weight, but this stuff look good.

Heman Lee
Alameda Aer-O-Nuts
Woodland/Davis Aeromodelers
www.aeromaniacs.com

I am an expert on the Poly-Fiber system.

The Poly Fiber dopes are actually nothing special. They don't even recommend that you use the dopes. Normally, you use poly tack, then poly brush, then poly spray, then poly tone. These are not true dopes as they are non-tautening. All shrink in the poly-fibre system comes from the heat shrinking.

The dopes are only available for a few holdouts.

Floyd Cummins

>I am an expert on the Poly-Fiber system.
=========================================

Noticed you're also an expert on the Sig Akromaster (Post #39, Stukette's thread).

That's what's so nice about this forum: all the expertise available.

Mike Keville
Tucson