Sandringham Repair

[piker]

Now that all the bits and pieces are stuck back together, I can get on with the filling and sanding process.

First I aggressively ground away at the high spots on the wing and fuselage, then just like icing a cake, I applied the first filler coat.  Much of this filler will be sanded off again, then a second coat will be applied to fill in the low spots.

[wollins]

What filler are you using Rob?  The first two pics look like automotive filler but what is the white one in the later pics?

Colin

[piker]

The first two pictures just show the bare, roughly sanded repair joint.  The colours you see are:  balsa, ply, primer, and auto spot filler, all exposed from under the paint from sanding.

The white filler is Dap, light weight Spackle as shown below.  It spreads on really nicely, and sands easily, but is not very strong (based on my first impression).  However, all the filler will be glassed over with 1.2oz cloth and epoxy, before final filling and priming.

I do have concerns about the stability (strength) of the structure with glass over the filler, but I don't think it'll be a problem as the nose of the fuselage sees very little loading, and the wing repair will be stable enough in tension with the glass skins, and in compression (primarily on the top surface) with enough wood structure remaining from before the crash.  I would be more concerned if the plane was to take crazy G loadings, but it doesn't.

[piker]

The major patching work is done and I've started to glass the areas in need of structural stability... those being the entire front end of the fuselage, a couple of areas further back where there were major splits in the original glass skin, and of course, the wing break and wing tip where there was a fair amount of damage.  I'll glass the underside of both the wing and the fuselage tonight, then the surface fine tuning can be started, in preparation for painting.

[piker]

Just a quick update based on some work I did a couple of weeks ago, now that I just found the pictures while downloading stuff from the camera.

The images below show the first step in blending the edges of the fiberglass cloth that I had applied to the repaired areas.  Since then, after sanding, I have sprayed a coat of filler primer to the glassed areas of the fuselage, now awaiting the next sanding step.

[Papa]

Did you have to realign the fire walls? And if you did, how did you do that?


Jack.

[piker]

I just stuck them back on then sighted along the LE to make sure the shafts were reasonably parallel.  Mounting props, or even better, straight sticks on the shafts makes it easier to see misalignments.

[piker]

O.K. with all this talk of big flying boats lately (for which I'm completely thrilled  ), I figured it's time I updated my Sandringham repair thread...

Well, I left off last March when I got to the point that I needed to do a lot of surface filling and sanding.  The best place to do that is in my garage, as I then don't have to worry about smell and messing up the floor.  But in March it was too dang cold to work outside, so I put the project on hold until the weather got better.  But then there were other airplanes to get ready for the flying season, so I didn't get back to Sandy until a few weeks ago.

Anyway, I've been sanding and filling and sanding and filling for the past few weeks (a little here and there), and I have the plane to the point where I will apply an overall coat of primer, in preparation for the final sanding then paint.  I need to get going on this as I figure I only have a couple weeks of nice weather left.

BTW, so much sanding and filling wouldn't NORMALLY be required, but I'm working on fixing up a lot of small scares left over from the big crash, so patience is required     See a picture below of the plane from a couple of weeks ago.  It looks about the same now, just more fine tuned...but will soon move to the next step.

While I was focussing on the main parts of the plane, the cowls were left with a little more patching to be done, and the poor, old tip floats were still looking very beat-up.  Well, I tackled the job of fixing up the tip floats over the past couple of evenings and now they're starting to come back into shape.  The main problem was that the struts were broken off and so I needed to dig them out of the floats and install new ones.  After last nights work I'm left with filling and sanding to do, which is relatively simple.  I want to have these and the cowls ready for paint at the same time as the rest of the plane so I can do them all when the spray gun is set-up.

This time spent focussing on the smaller parts has me thinking about some detail features that I want to add to the cowls and nacelles.  The only thing I have to do for the cowls is to create the cowl TE fins (those things that open and close on the back of the cowl... see pic below).  This is no easy feat as I had to figure out the shape of each piece so it will lay nicely around the cowl at the proper "open" angle that I want to achieve.  I've worked it out in CAD (see picture below), and will see how they fit tonight.  I'll take pictures of both the cowls and tip float, so you can see how they're coming along.

Anyway... just a bit of an update and more flying boat chat 

[sihinch]

Can you summarise for me?

[piker]

For Simon...


Still working on the plane...


Not done yet...

[piker]

O.K.  I'm back at the Sandringham repair now that my workshop space is become more usable.

I left off a couple of years ago with the plane mostly ready for painting.  Then I tore the roof off the house and the plane went into the rafters of the garage for long term storage.  The other day I brought it down, cleaned off the dust and spider poop, and started touching up some of the nicks and scratches to prepare again for painting. 

But over the weekend I was moving things around in my shop and a wing that was leaning in the corner tipped over and guillotined the Sandy horizontal stab.  I was not impressed.  Oh well.  I applied some 5 minute epoxy last night and it's back in shape.  A couple coats of filler and sanding will make it as good as new.

See below for current state.

Robert

[octagon]

Good to see the old girl getting some attention Rob. look forward to seeing her fly next year.

[sihinch]

Still one of my favourite (model) planes! Way to go Rob!

[Michael]

That doesn't look like a workshop; it's much too clean.

[piker]

I haven't shown much of my repair work on the Sandy, as it's been nothing more than a slow, tedious process of filling and sanding, when I get a chance.  But I started the painting process tonight with the first coat of white on the fuselage and the grey on the wings.  As I was refreshing my memory of what colour goes where via Google images, I clicked over to Youtube to see if I could find any videos of the Sandringham that I hadn't seen before.  I found one...

If you're interested in this type of plane and the nostalgia for the flying boat era, take a look at this video from the 70's.  Pretty corny, but beautiful too... if you're into this sort of thing like I am.

I'll show pictures of my Sandringham after a bit more paint.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zbtfFQKuGg