Several points from a Brit newbie...

Hello all, I'm new to building model aircraft and especially foam. I have some sheets of Depron foam, which doesn't have paper on either side. Is there some secret method to fold back a wing top from the wing underside without cracking the foam? Also, has anyone tried covering the foam in Solarfilm type stuff or does the heat from the iron make that unwise?
Does anyone use car wrap vinyl? Failing that, what about paint? I want to use foam to make scale light aircraft, so nice liveries are a must.

Cheers,
Martin
 

Hondo76251

Legendary member
Dont have a lot of experience with depron, not a lot of access to it here but I did secure a few sheets to play with a while back.

I found I can roll a pretty good bend in it by putting packing tape on one side.
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Thanks. I managed to roll the turtle deck on the Skystreak, but I have used a shaped balsa leading edge for the wing as I can't roll the Depron that tightly. No sweat as the whole 32" wing so far only weighs 22 grams even with balsa leading and trailing edges. I can only think that the ugly brown paper on FT 'planes enables some liberties to be taken with it when folding. All I got was a "CRACK" and two pieces. Good job I was trying it on a small piece as an experiment. Here's the wing so far on the Skystreak. Note the rolled turtle deck. That's in 3mm Depron, rolled against a broom handle.

Martin
 

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Wildthing

Legendary member
A nice straight leading edge like that just do the same as the wing fold as in the FT Spitfire video. With practice you can fold it into a 180 flat sheet . Here are a couple pictures of a horizontal and vertical for an experimental Baron I am doing. In the background of the third picture (vertical folded) you will see how I have the wing taped ready to fold, 1 1/2" tape, 1st strip is center of the fold and then I do 2 more strips on each side and make sure to overlap the tape. As you can see with the vertical it is folded right over. Where the spar is you can crease the inside of the foam/wing with a thick ruler or I use my carpenters square that way it rolls exactly where you want it to .
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Wildthing, that just takes me to hundreds of videos of flights, no builds. Once you have a fold, do you remove the tape? I couldn't get any bending at all without the foam at the V cut cracking as soon as I started folding.
There seems to be very little about working with Depron on the net, or maybe I'm not looking in the right places.

Martin
 

Wildthing

Legendary member
Wildthing, that just takes me to hundreds of videos of flights, no builds. Once you have a fold, do you remove the tape? I couldn't get any bending at all without the foam at the V cut cracking as soon as I started folding.
There seems to be very little about working with Depron on the net, or maybe I'm not looking in the right places.

Martin

The video above with the covering film is basically the same idea, it and the tape protect the foam while bending it.

You cut a v groove where you want to make the ben, tape the backside up good and say with a long wing you might want a yard stick or something similar to help you apply even pressure all the way down the joint. Do not RUSH the bend, you are going to bend it a few dozen times and each time you bend it you go slightly farther. A short little piece where your hand can cover the span then no ruler required. I have my large 48" steel ruler I use. But you slowly work the bend until you are a full 180 bent . The horizontal I pictured above I used a 12" square to make sure there was equal pressure applied .

Sorry I couldn't find the FT video, I found one but it was for a newer Spit and the speedbuild kit is different then the old version.
 

Wildthing

Legendary member
Oh, yes once folded and glued off comes the tape. :) It takes a little bit of practice but use small scrap pieces and practice with them.

Also when folding and glueing you also will require the ruler to help keep the wing flat especially the LE , it will want to bend up because of the spar, you want the top plate to bend not the lower. I always fold with the bottom plate on the bench ,

Here is the Baron with a folded wing, vertical and horizontal.
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