FIRST TIME I'M PROUD OF MY IGNORANCE, BUT...HEEEEELP!!!!

I guess I shold be proud of never having built a warped wing. I'm no genius builder, but I've always been so careful when building a wing that they all came straight,

except for this last one. Maybe my pride got in the way and I goofed.

Last night I did what I should had done while building it, (mesasure the daylights out of it) and, to my dismay, the outboard tip was - with a straight and level TE - more than 1/8"higher than the inboard tip.

I guess this hapened when I joined the panels, since each one has a straight LE .

I took a shower with offending wing, layed it on a flat glass surface and put wheights to bring the LE down.

No good! Now the TE has a bow, it's about 1/8" higher on the center.

How do I unwarp this sucker??

Ion,
Take another hot shower with the wing!
Then weight the trailing edge to take out that warp, and the leading edge to take it out. Make sure that everthing else is held in place while it dries. You will probably have to go a little more than it looks like it needs, but not much.
Bill <><

Bill,

thye problem is that the sheeting got some kind of "geography" (mountainsa nd valleys) after a while.

I was really scared,but I used a hair drier my mom gave me thet's almost like a monokote heat gun, and it got back to normal.

I'm getting ready to do it again.

Take another shower, it is quick, but I would recommend to make another wing. It is not so quick but certainly quicker than reworking of whole model. You are risking that the wing will "do something" later on and you will have permanent trim problems.

Darn you, Igor!

that's the last thing I wanted to hear: the thruth!!!

I'm going to take a look at your site and check them foam wings again.

Ion (warps are no good!)m Muniz

LAST EDITED ON Apr-19-04 AT 06:54 PM (CDT)
 
Ion, I had a similar problem like this recently on a Brodak Tanager wing. It looked like a banana when I took it off the glass. I ended up replacing the leading edge that came with the kit with new wood. A perfect wing is what I now have. I tried the water and ammonia and weights and so forth but new wood is what corrected the problem. Better than building a whole new wing.

Bill

I just built a wing from a 40 year old kit. I spent two weeks straightening out the all the big honking shaped LE and TE pieces using water and opposite curve clamping and twisting. Sheets and spars? Just go get new pieces. Sometimes when I fixed a big curve in the middle of a piece, two little ones would show up on each end. Go after them. When you jig up, you don't want to ask whatever jig system you use to do anything but confirm your alignment, not hold it. Don

I recently had the problem you describe. It was caused by induced stress when I sheeted the center section. Guess I got carried away and force fitted something without knowing it. Replaced the center section sheeting, and it is straight as can be. Where are your ripples in the sheeting? This might work for you. Before and after, I saw no rippling in the LE and TE sheeting. Go figure...