Rebuild or refinish......

Sometimes I plan to refinish old planes for upcoming seasons. To correct things I could have done better but rushed because it was going to be this seasons plane. Or just to breathe new life into an older ship. Anyway, I've always ended up just rebuilding completely and trashing the previous plane.

Why have I gone this route in the past?

One plane became oil soaked, I didn't know until I removed some tissue.

Instead of simply stripping the finish off, I tried to strip the tissue off as well. Then I ended banging this plane around and piece by piece it broke apart.

I really don't know about refinishing, I try to do the tissue thinking it will be easier seeing how I sanded through in spots on the original cover job. Maybe I don't need to.

I had thoughts of just wet sanding the entire thing down, if that doesn't fill the grain and all I don't know what will. I know it will be time consuming.

Do I go with paint thinner and do Windy's 5 and 5?

All these things lead me to believe, it is easier for ME to simply rebuild. I can correct building mistakes, and I'm getting fresh wood to glue to.

What do the rest of you do?

Matt touches up his planes if they get any hanger rash. It is easiest to do this on a continuing basis and keep them fresh. but...

He tried to refinish one once. It ended up heavier. It took 2/3 of the work of building a new plane from scratch. All he ended up with was an old and heavier plane. His comment, "Never again."

You may be right. It may be better to just build a new one. This is not to say you can't make repairs or even modifications that may improve the plane. But total refinish???? Maybe not.

How far do you want to take this? I once decided to make a real good job of de-oil-soaking a typical Team Racer. I put it in a plastic bag, and tipped about a gallon of methanol in with it. The idea was to really soak the wood and all those hard to get at places, and then dry it off with a rag/cotton wool or somesuch. How to make sure the methanol got everywhere? Brainwave. I filled our bath with water and lowered the bag into it, until all the air was driven out of the bag. I then folded the top over, clipped it shut and left it for a couple of days. (Loud complaints from family, but heck, priorities!). On opening the bag I found I had a perfect precut kit. Every single piece had come unglued. I even had four perfect wing skins, where the dope finish had peeled off. I will say it was very well degreased!! But not quite as I had envisaged.

I have refinished a lot of planes but most have been I beams. I don't worry about broken ribs as I just replace them.I agree if the plane is badly fuel soaked get rid of it. I spend a lot of work building so as to keep the fuel out of the plane. I would think the piped planes would last a lot longer as the oil is leaving past the flap line and that is the most common spot for fuel to enter the plane. I have used paint remover for years to remove old finishes. If you can't get the finish off and sanded in a week or two it's not worth doing.Bill Werwage is a master at reworking and refinishing well used planes.

Okay, the oil thing was my fault. I had to fix my landing gear block, which required drilling a new hole for the screws. Did I remove the tank first? No, hey I can just keep the drill from going too deep. So of course I puncture the tank. Did I bother checking? No, because I couldn't possibly have done what I just thought I did.

After that I couldn't get a needle setting, had all kinds of engine trouble. At the end of the season, it was a couple weeks later. I pulled everything out to get to the bottom of the problem. I saw the tank. Then I saw the tissue lifting off the outboard wing. Out of curiousity I peeled it back.

Well, the entire thing was soaked. I accepted my poor judgement and sent it to the trash can. I couldn't even break the wood, it would just bend over and oil would seep out.

Wow, I don't think even Currell would make an attempt at that point. My planes so far don't last long enough for it to become an issue. I'm hoping I'll run into this soon...

Tim

I saw this result coming as I read it and started laughing and am still laughing. I tried this bag and methonal trick on a smaller free flight once. Once is all it took. "Wow, look at all the parts!!" Some I didn't even recognize and I designed the darn thing. Good thing it was only a Peanut scale bipe.

After wet sanding most of the finish off my Legacy and repainting I will never do it again. Much easier to build a new airframe.

The real question is if the model is worth refinishing. I have a model that placed twice at the US Team Trials and had lots of life still in it. It is built as good as anything I could build today and is an excellent flier. Being that I do not have time to build one from scratch this year, it made perfect sense to attempt a refinish.

After speaking at length with Frank McMillan about what he did on his Caudron and with Randy Smith about what not to do, I decided to give it a try. Using cheap laquer thinner from Home Depot and a roll of paper towels, I wiped the finish off in less than 4 hours. It was so easy I cannot imagine anyone having a hard time.

I am keeping close track of the weight removed and what I put back on, and right now I am confident that the model will be better than new.

I thought about the wet sanding option, however I knew it would make a mess. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to sand down a model without going through the paper in places. I could only imagine the mess others have described. When finished with the chemical strip, the model was ready for a light sanding and a coat of clear, then right back to filler coat.

>The real question is if the model is worth refinishing. I
>have a model that placed twice at the US Team Trials and had
>lots of life still in it. It is built as good as anything I
>could build today and is an excellent flier. Being that I do
>not have time to build one from scratch this year, it made
>perfect sense to attempt a refinish.
>
>
>Curt

I agree with Curt. Give some thought to whether the ship is worth the effort.

For exactly the same reasons as Curt, I stripped and refinished my '94 World Champs airplane, the Great Expectations and it turned into the purple pond scum, more elegantly called the Final Edition. This same airplane won the Nats in 1995 while red, white and blue; and then the 2000 Nats in glorious pond scum regalia.

I knew the ship was the best built plane I had ever had but problems with the original finish resulted in it being pretty gross ... around 68 oz or so. Even a very powerful P.A. .61 this ship required a little finesse from time to time to get good patterns.

Here's a couple of tips from my experience.

The original finish was a combination of dope which ultimately started to peel during the taping process for trim colors; and epoxy which was applied directly over the quickly sanded dope in a fit of pique. This all happened on one sunday afternoon when I was absolutely livid about the white lifting.

The result was essentially two finishes piled on top of one another. Gross!! in more ways than one.

Two get this inch thick layer of goo off a nice airframe was a bit of a challenge. The wing and tail were the easiest. Using a hot air gun I would poke a hole in the covering (a built up wing)and then heat the paper covering and it would then peel off in large chunks. MOst of the wing and tail were stripped in a couple of hours.

The solid parts, fuse, flaps, rudder etc. were attacked chemically using first an epoxy stripper and when the epoxy was gone stripper for lacquers was used. This took basically a coat of stripper for each substantial layer of paint: Clear coat, epoxy colors, white and silver dope layers. This took more time, a few days of part time effort, to completely strip down to the bare wood.

A few hours of prep sanding and it was ready to refinish.

I did leave the fillets in place. They were epoxolite and I was afraid removing them would potential abuse the wing sheeting right at the fuse, creating a stress riser that might cause a wing failure.

All the wood surfaces were then covered with CF veil and dope and ultmtely PPG automotive purple pond scum colors. This finish was also screwed up a bit in a manner than caused excessive material to be sprayed on and so the finished product wasn't as much lighter as I had hoped. It had, however, gone from 68 oz (on 650 Square inches) down to 62. I think 60 oz was realistic until the spray gun started acting up causing severl colors on the wing to require respraying.

A note of caution. I did cover the wing surface wood with the CF veil right up to the fuse. I WOULD NOT recommend doing so on an all balsa wing structure since the CF make the wood it covers very rigid. This stiffness right up to a singe chord section produces a potential stress riser that can and has caused wings to fail under load.

I did the CF with my fingers crossed on this airplane because I knew there were three major 0.014 carbon fibre reinforced spars running tip to tip in the wing itself which should supply more than adequate flex restriction. So far, so good. It's been flying purple for four or five years now. I know because I've had more than a few competitors suggest it is actually part of the landscaping at the L Pad in Muncie.

LAST EDITED ON Feb-01-04 AT 11:53 AM (CDT)
 
Ditto Curt and Ted. I have a Parrott P-47 that I built very shortly after returning to the sport. An excellent, but slightly overweight, flier. Thanks to the "wonerful air" that we sometimes get on one circle at our club's site, it was in need of top block, canopy, and rudder repairs. I put it away and went on to other planes. Aaron found a product called "Dad's Stripper" at Wal MArt, so we gave it a try. It removed all the clear and black/silver very quickly with very little effort. Removed any "putty", too! I experimented a little more, and the next coat removed the paper and nitrate base.
This gave me a bare wood airframe, and I went on to cut off the blocks, etc., and do a major "lightening" job on it. I am about ready to paper it again. It will be several ounces lighter this time!
(better job on hollowing the blocks, etc..)
If it is a good ship, it can really be worth a refinish or restoration.
Bill <><

The one thing that occured to me while typing this out was. It is probably a shorter time to be patience with the finish to begin with.

Compare the time of doing it right the first time against doing it then doing it again.....