Telephone books? Sure, why not. I've switched to unprinted news stock only to make painting easier but telephone book paper sounds like a great idea. Has it's own storage container.

After a few experiments for the slope soaring planks we're building, we're going with the following skinning method. Mind you, this is for gliders that will be flying fast, sometimes with ballast, and DSing with attendant heavy flight loads, and landing on (or otherwise impacting) very rocky surfaces. I tried paper over foam TE's and they weren't rigid enough for our ailerons.

Wire cut the EPP foam cores.
Cut out servo bays and lead-wire tunnels.
Cover tunnels with balsa, glue on subspars, spot-tape TE stock in place.
Sand all to final airfoil.
Spray cores and fiberglass windowscreen with 3M 99 heavy-duty contact.
roll core onto screen from LE to TE on bottom surface, then from LE to TE on top (1 piece for each straight-tapered half-panel.)
Thin lightweight spackle with WBPU varnish, spread onto screen, scrape level with screen.
Lightly sand and repaint with WBPU,
Cover with film.

I just covered a 51" wingspan Mambo with paper using wallpaper paste mixed with Titebond II (basically a waterproof version of white glue). It came out really nicely.

I mixed up about 3 tablespoons of wallpaper paste powder initially, but a little of that goes a VERY long way -- I kept adding water, and more water, and more water, and it kept staying thick. Eventially I poured 3/4 of it out, and then added more water until I finally got it to the right consistency, and then added the Titebond to it. I covered the whole Mambo, and had enough glue to probably cover another two planes left over!

Ive never used wall paper paste , is it harder to work with then just white glue ? Ive been playing with newsprint and really like the results , just bought a big end of roll the other day even

Wallpaper paste sounds very interesting. So one tablespoon of powder for a sizeable plane, and mix it to whatever thickness would be right to fill the texture in the screen that I'm using. It would likely be tougher and definitely more adhesive than thinned lightweight spackle.

Well I mix the wallpaper paste with Titebond II yellow carpenter's glue. I did that after I took a piece of beaded styrofoam and a bunch of strips of paper, and tried a bunch of different glue combinations, then peeled all the strips off. I was surprised at the results, I thought some other glues would beat wallpaper paste -- the only one that did was the combo paste with yellow(or white) glue.

It's very easy to use walpaper paste -- just be sure to follow the mixing instructions on the label -- otherwise, like me, you will mix too much and too little water and get lumps that took a while to mash out. This stuff is very economical.

Use a wide bristle brush and brush it on the paper, fold it loosely together, glue to glue (called booking) but don't crease, and let it rest for a minute or two to soak in and stop curling. Then brush the model surface lightly, unfold thepaper and apply it.

Paper tends to bubble and wrinkle a bit. Work it out as best you can, though drying and shrinkage will remove a lot of wrinkles and make a very smooth surface.

Be sure to paper both sides at a time, otherwise you will warp the surface. Same thing with initial coats of paint, as they relax the paper temporarily, if water based.

Another strength test this time with Bluecore foam.
Paper was unprinted newstock - glue was 50/50 titebond/water.

Pretty amazing, and so nice to see that in living color. Pictures are worth a thousand words.

Thanks

Fred

Hey guys, I just had an idea for a tough , stiff, dimentionaly stable covering that should be fairly lightweight, but if on the heavy side, I think it would be the bomb for the larger foamies.
When I was a contractor, we would use a lightweight "netting" over the studs on the new homes we built to blow fiberglass insulation behind. It came in rolls 9'x150'. It was made of vary random swirling fibers of glass or nylon or polyester I think, I'm not sure exactly what it was made of , but I think you get the drift.
I was thinking if some waste could be secured from an insulation contractor for free or next to nothing, it would make a very good covering for adding strength and stiffness.
Has anybody tried this stuff yet?

Major Breakthrough!!!
No more paper for our slope planes. Three of us have been experimenting with building methods for slope gliders that we fly over rocks with no landing zones. I got kraft paper going on well and was impressed with the rigidity over EPP. Another method that is much faster is 10 mil laminating film ironed over EPP with a CF ribbon spar to support the bending loads.

We were playing with FG window screen, using spray contact cement to hold it to the foam, then filling the spaces with lightweight spackle thinned with polyurethane varnish or epoxy and microballoons. Don't bother with the varnish and spackle.

Steve tried 3M 77 to hold the screen tight to the EPP, then brushed a thin coat of epoxy over the screen OMG!! VERY stiff in bending and twisting! With microballoons it makes a paintable surface, very smooth, but takes some sanding. I was very impressed with the torsional stiffness, as the screen fibers were running parallel to the span and chord, not applied on the bias. The EPP scrap was a leftover wing panel about 3" wide, 1/2" thick and 2 feet long.

Our next test will be to sacrifice the test piece to see how well it can resist impacts on the leading edge, and how to repair a crushed LE once it is damaged.

I will try a different method for the skin: spread a thin coat of epoxy on a mirror, then lay the screen on top. When cured and lifted off the glass, the screen should have one glass-smooth surface, and can be glued with contact cement or vacuum bagged over foam. Our major concern is how well it will wrap over a LE.

Forget the contractors' netting. FG screen is cheap and available almost everywhere. This is really encouraging!

The FG screen sounds great. Epoxy is heavy. So on large airplanes I'll bet it works great. I still love silkspan on small models, newsprint is good on medium. Got some new stuff from Tower made by Dave Brown, called Skyloft, $5.98? For 3 square yards. It is a nylon material to replace silkspan. It is applied wet (WBPU) and grows when wet, but instead of mass shrinking it returns to original size when dry. Similar to shrinkage, but different? Nylon is tough, and it has a swirl random thread pattern. Best of all it is supposed to take way less coats to seal completely (when using dope)

Fred

Originally Posted by EdSoars

Major Breakthrough!!!
No more paper for our slope planes. Three of us have been experimenting with building methods for slope gliders that we fly over rocks with no landing zones. I got kraft paper going on well and was impressed with the rigidity over EPP. Another method that is much faster is 10 mil laminating film ironed over EPP with a CF ribbon spar to support the bending loads.

We were playing with FG window screen, using spray contact cement to hold it to the foam, then filling the spaces with lightweight spackle thinned with polyurethane varnish or epoxy and microballoons. Don't bother with the varnish and spackle.

Be sure and include starting and ending weights/sqft for comparison information.

The paper/foam/glue weighs about 32g/sqft.

I would guess the materials you are using are at least 2 times heavier.
(10 mil laminating film weighs 25g/sqft. Double sided on Bluecor would weigh 72g/sqft) For some applications that may be great, for others, too heavy. Options are nice to have.

For our conditions, a light build in a 40" span makes 5-7 oz/sq ft a good range. For a 60" span, 7-9 oz/sq ft. Larger spans get problematic for landing on rocky slopes. It's a much different design task than for flat-field thermal flying.

I'll try to weigh a finished panel large enough to give a meaningful skin weight.

Well, of course epoxy and various specialty glasses, kevlar cloth, carbon fiber cloth, have been used over foam for full size aircraft composite construction for years, and I'm sure will produce superior properties at very low weight gains by comparison with window screen, particularly if vaccuum bagged. Likewise prepreg cloth has been used for this and lots of other things. You might have difficulty releasing cured epoxy from glass.

In boat building as well, Dynel, polypropylene, Kevlar,and many other cloths and tows have been used in laminated FRP construction.

I'm still interested in paper for models for a lot of reasons.

Let's see how much it can take. BTW, the test articles are 4"x10".

The 2 plain Bluecor pieces failed.
The 2 sided newspaper covered piece handled 3.5# but bent with 5.5#.

All I can say guys is, the plane I have covered has been cartwheeled many times without any damage. It's pretty bulletproof.