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Oh, no! Another scarfing question!

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Aerowerx

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2011
Messages
6,092
Location
Marion, Ohio
My project requires scarfing some thin (3/32 inch) ply for the fuselage skins. Length will be about 8 feet for the inner skin and 16 feet for the outer skin.

Do the joints have to (A)be glued first flat on a table, and then attached to the fuselage as one piece, or can the individual sections be (B)glued on one at a time?

And, is there a preference to the orientation of the scarf joints:

1)___//___//___//___ or 2) ___//___\\___//___\\___ or 3) ___\\___\\___\\___

Front of the plane is to the left in this diagram.

The advantage of (A) is that it would be easier to align the scarf joints themselves, but the disadvantage would be having to mix up a bunch of epoxy all at once and get a 16 foot piece of floppy plywood all aligned on the fuselage before the epoxy work time runs out. (I have been using T-88, but maybe I should invest in some West System 205/109---longer working time?)

The advantage of (B) is that only a little epoxy would have to be mixed at a time and it is easier to align a 4 foot piece of ply than a 16 foot. The disadvantage is in aligning the scarf joints themselves.

As far as 1), 2), or 3), 1) would be used for attaching individual pieces starting at the tail, and 3) for individual pieces starting at the nose. I really don't like 2), but included it for completeness.
 
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