Q500 wings / Glassed or Painted???

[Victor Arreola]

Hi everyone.

Im trying to find a better way to give my Q500 foam/balsa wings a better finishing details, such as the ones obtained with the composite wings, but without adding too much weight.

One option is to fiber glass them and then paint, but fiber glassing without having the vacumm bagging which I dont have would be very difficult.

Other Options Ive been thinking would be to ad primer directly to balsa sheetings and after that a slight coat of paint.

Another one would be to use Dope and after that a slight coat of paint.

Please any comment or differente technique would be very appreciated as I dont want to keep using Monokote on my wings as it doesnt give me the finishing Im looking for.

Best Regards
Víctor Arreola.

[DLD]

Getting a glass-like finish on a wood skinned wing is difficult, and more importantly, heavy. Probably the best bet would be to thicken epoy to about the consistency of mayonaise with silica or micro-balloons and squeegee it into the grain. Follow that up with a light sanding and primer. Sand almost all of the primer off (for weight). It may take several applications spraying primer and then sanding most of it off to get a good surface. Then paint sparingly. If you are very careful, the weight won't be too bad. If you can find some, Obechi wood is a good alternative to balsa, and it is easier to fill and paint. Problem is it is hard to find these days. If you make even a small number of wings, vacuum is the way to go. If you find an old refridgerator or check Ebay, you can get your hands on a pump relatively cheap. The process really is pretty simple, and you can eliminate the wood skins and get almost as good a finish as molded wings. The mylar can be used over and over if you are careful with it, and the materials are pretty cheap unless you staert using a lot of carbon.The best part is that experimentation is really easy with bagged wings.

Good luck,

David Layne

[Splatt]

The answer for a "hard" looking balsa wing is to paint your finsh onto mylar and vacuum bag the mylar to wing and then peel off the mylar

this dude, Randy etken does it, comes out lookin' like compostite.

do some searching on RCU , he does have a bit of the process posted