Jon Ferguson
Well-Known Member
For those of you who don't know I am building the new 2 place Minimax (Epic Sport). I am planning on using the Stewart System to cover the plane and painting it with latex.
While I am new to aircraft building I have some experience with wood boats and especially fiberglass over wood style building.
I've been reading that a common place for rot in wood aircraft is around bolts and fittings. The boatbuilding community deals with this problem with Epoxy Encapsulation. Ideally you drill the hole (slightly oversized), fill the hole with epoxy, let it cure, then re-drill the hole, now the bolt isn’t in contact the wood It’s touching epoxy.
Varnish isn’t particularly good at preventing water intrusion whereas epoxy provides a stable barrier. The upside to varnish is that it will allow the wood to breath and dry out if it gets wet. The downside to epoxy is if you miss even a tiny part of the wood, moisture can get in and get trapped under the epoxy defeating the whole shebang. However if you test the wood for moisture content and coat it completely with epoxy it’s quite well protected. If you coat it again with varnish for U/V resistance it’s especially good.
I have batch of U/V resistant epoxy from RAKA that might serve as well.
I’m not sure what the process would end up weighing as compared to old school varnish, depends on how many coats of each I suppose.
Have any of you used epoxy to protect your wood aircraft structure? What were the results?
http://www.westsystem.com/ss/varnish-over-epoxy
While I am new to aircraft building I have some experience with wood boats and especially fiberglass over wood style building.
I've been reading that a common place for rot in wood aircraft is around bolts and fittings. The boatbuilding community deals with this problem with Epoxy Encapsulation. Ideally you drill the hole (slightly oversized), fill the hole with epoxy, let it cure, then re-drill the hole, now the bolt isn’t in contact the wood It’s touching epoxy.
Varnish isn’t particularly good at preventing water intrusion whereas epoxy provides a stable barrier. The upside to varnish is that it will allow the wood to breath and dry out if it gets wet. The downside to epoxy is if you miss even a tiny part of the wood, moisture can get in and get trapped under the epoxy defeating the whole shebang. However if you test the wood for moisture content and coat it completely with epoxy it’s quite well protected. If you coat it again with varnish for U/V resistance it’s especially good.
I have batch of U/V resistant epoxy from RAKA that might serve as well.
I’m not sure what the process would end up weighing as compared to old school varnish, depends on how many coats of each I suppose.
Have any of you used epoxy to protect your wood aircraft structure? What were the results?
http://www.westsystem.com/ss/varnish-over-epoxy
