wax paper

[Neil lawrence]

Wheres the best place to get wax paper, for laying up my wing ribs on for gluing, fed up with gluing the ribs to the jigs.
on a happier note, I passed my PPL last month so I best get a move on with my project.

[Sandy Hutton LAA372]

Try rubbing some candlewax on the paper you have.

[Richard Mole]

Hello Neil,

Sellotape or even parcel tape (the very thin variety) are excellent ways of providing a release film between the jig and the rib, fuselage frame, or whatever. Sellotape is see-through of course and you may also be able to make out markings through the thinner parcel tapes.

Small length of kitchen worktop (offcuts- are often free for collection) make excellent building boards for small jigged assemblies such as ribs. You can scribe jig outlines very easily on formica type surfaces, and very accurately. To make the lines easier to see, just rub some soft pencil graphite across the scribed line with a finger and clear away any excess (Graphited tallow by the way is the traditional lubricant for wooden block bearings).

Also don't forget the time-honoured adjustable jig clamp; cut off slices of dowel (recycle an old wooden broom handle etc) and its important to cut accurately at right angles to the long axis, and to cut a slice slightly shorter than the thickness of the members that you want to clamp. Drill slightly off-centre (pretty easy that bit), glue on a half lolly stick handle for your cam handle (or a bit of spare ply, tongue depresser or whatever you have to hand) and, when the adhesive has cured, you can screw the cam to the jig, on the appropriate side of the scribed line. Then tighten the screw just enough to permit you to turn the cam to accurately line up the clamped member with the scribed line. You may need a few dozen cam clamps.

Making lots of similar wooden ribs is a breeze this way as the cams obviously release very easily when you take up a finished rib out of the jig before accurately realigning it for the next rib. You may need cams on either side of members with complex curvature, or to hold say soldiers in the right place. Just renew any sellotape that gets wrecked when releasing the item from the jig.

If you dont like the weight of heavy kitchen work top (you only choose the really flat untwisted off-cuts) you can use something like melamine treated hardboard. The screws for the cams will work fine if there is a piece of thicker ply underneath it. And if the thickness of the boards allows it, you can sometimes use those very cheap one piece draughtman's clips (bent up thin stainless about 20mm wide) to hold small members tight down onto the bulding board - but this only works if you trim the board back to provide say a 40mm excess around the jigged up assembly. But watch out the surface stays absolutely flat.

Richard

PS If you are making up wooden components you will probably find that the best time to clean up the under-side of bonded ribs or whatever is immediately after you release them from the jig. You can also use sellotape on the under-side of the members before you insert then into the jig as this can help to mask the timber and reduce the area affected by surplus adhesive adjacent to the bonded joints.

[Bill McCarthy]

One thing I recall from one of the magazines many moons ago was to never sand the end grain (on one of those rotary sanders) to achieve a good finish as this fills the cell structure with fine wood dust thereby weakening the glued joint due to lack of adhesion.

[mhunt1]

Hi Neil

I used the backing paper from sheets of self adhesive labels and this worked fine for me using Aerolite 306.

Malcolm

[G-AWMN]

Neil,

Well done on the PPL.

For my Luton Minor rebuild I have used grease proof paper. I get this in rolls from the draw next to the cooker in the kitchen. I have been told by my wife that all supermarkets stock this in the bakery section but I will take her word for this as I try to keep my knowledge of supermarkets to a minimum.

I have used this extensively with 306 and had no problems.

Stuart Penfold

[mike newall]

A roll of painters plastic - thinner the better. It is se through, very cheap and usually will release from the glue.

Hardaker will concur from model aeroplane building I am sure

[rans6andrew]

when I were a lad we used that new fangled cling film stuff to protect our airyplane plans from the balsa cement.

It is also to be found in the draw in the kitchen.

[Neil lawrence]

Thank you all, it looks like I was looking for a complex answer to a simple problem.

Thanks for help, unfortanatly I'm building the isaacs spitefire so no jig will be used more than once due to each rib being a different size, (one port and one strbd)

Thanks all for bringing me back down to earth
Neil.