If you want to skip the explanation story and just read about the finishing technique, scroll down to the next text that is this color.
Hello all, this is my first time. I had to come and share what I have just experienced, FliteTest, and this community which they have created, have done so much for me in the way that I am able to enjoy my hobby, so I am happy and honored to attempt to give some thing back or at least like I said share a little bit of experience even though its not much.
I have had lots of fun building and flying (mostly crashing), the FT-Explorer and the Mini Arrow. I started with the explorer and that was great, but I did want something smaller. Well the mini arrow proved to be a little beyond my skill level and as of yet have yet to be able to fly it for more than about 5 minutes without crashing. So I decided to build the Explorer but scale it down. That turned out pretty good but flying a little too late one night lost sight and crashed... My point of this story is that I have had just the wing from that scaled down explorer build sitting around for quite a while due to the fuselage being tossed out. The last couple days, I've had a friend who took interest over and I helped him to build a tiny trainer, while building one for myself as well obviously. I flew it this morning and was a lot of fun. I built the more advanced wing for it, and had pretty good control of it but it did get sketchy a couple times. So I decided to pull out that explorer wing and fix it up so I could use it onto the tiny trainer fuselage. Well I wanted to fix the wing up a bit and have had a few ideas I been wanting to try.
First I rolled the wing tips up like you would see on a cloud surfer by removing the paper on the top side and forming it just like we have done with the noses and such in other build. But that leaves the problem of bare foam. To help it keep it's shape, I used some of the lightweight drywall spackle, watered down to adjust a thick paint, and brushed on a couple coats then sanded it. Then for the sealant, I used minwax polyacrylic. I liked how it was coming out so decided to see how it would do on bare foam and that's when I got excited! It is beautiful!! Looks every bit as good as a brand new store bought epo and imo even better! I am sure I'm not the first one to figure this out, but hopefully someone that has been looking for a solution to this will benefit. The other thing is all the possibilities that open up when being able to completely form the foam sheets however you want. You could do complete cylinder shape no problem, even double it up and glue it together for strength. Anyways, I will be sharing more pics as I progress, this is already far longer than I planned, but here are the first few pics!
Hello all, this is my first time. I had to come and share what I have just experienced, FliteTest, and this community which they have created, have done so much for me in the way that I am able to enjoy my hobby, so I am happy and honored to attempt to give some thing back or at least like I said share a little bit of experience even though its not much.
I have had lots of fun building and flying (mostly crashing), the FT-Explorer and the Mini Arrow. I started with the explorer and that was great, but I did want something smaller. Well the mini arrow proved to be a little beyond my skill level and as of yet have yet to be able to fly it for more than about 5 minutes without crashing. So I decided to build the Explorer but scale it down. That turned out pretty good but flying a little too late one night lost sight and crashed... My point of this story is that I have had just the wing from that scaled down explorer build sitting around for quite a while due to the fuselage being tossed out. The last couple days, I've had a friend who took interest over and I helped him to build a tiny trainer, while building one for myself as well obviously. I flew it this morning and was a lot of fun. I built the more advanced wing for it, and had pretty good control of it but it did get sketchy a couple times. So I decided to pull out that explorer wing and fix it up so I could use it onto the tiny trainer fuselage. Well I wanted to fix the wing up a bit and have had a few ideas I been wanting to try.
First I rolled the wing tips up like you would see on a cloud surfer by removing the paper on the top side and forming it just like we have done with the noses and such in other build. But that leaves the problem of bare foam. To help it keep it's shape, I used some of the lightweight drywall spackle, watered down to adjust a thick paint, and brushed on a couple coats then sanded it. Then for the sealant, I used minwax polyacrylic. I liked how it was coming out so decided to see how it would do on bare foam and that's when I got excited! It is beautiful!! Looks every bit as good as a brand new store bought epo and imo even better! I am sure I'm not the first one to figure this out, but hopefully someone that has been looking for a solution to this will benefit. The other thing is all the possibilities that open up when being able to completely form the foam sheets however you want. You could do complete cylinder shape no problem, even double it up and glue it together for strength. Anyways, I will be sharing more pics as I progress, this is already far longer than I planned, but here are the first few pics!
