Step by Step Wing Bagging By Evan Shaw 073 589 9339 evanevshaw@gmail.com Preparing the Leading Edge 1. Cut cores. (Cutting of wing cores is covered in another article elsewhere) 2. Sand the LE to a nice round shape. 3. Mark out about 7mm back from the LE on top and bottom. We are going to put 3 tows of 5mm wide carbon onto the LE. One on top one on the front and one underneath. See sketch above. 4. Masks off the cores. 5. Spray glue the LE with a light coat of Contact.
6. Immediately apply carbon tows to the LE, sticking them down to the wet contact glue. 7. Mix a fast cure epoxy laminating resin. If you don t have a scale, another method is to use syringes to get the correct proportions. 8. Wet out the carbon on the LE using your fingers. Remember to wear gloves. 9. Allow these LE to cure un-disturbed while you proceed with the next steps. Preparing Mylar sheets 10. In the mean time wax some Mylar sheets with Run In Ram Wax and let them dry properly. These sheets are cut exactly the same span as the wing panels but about 15mm to 20mm wider than the wing cord. About 0.25mm Mylar is ideal.
11. When the wax is dry, polish the excess wax off and set aside. 12. Paint the waxed side of the Mylar with your chosen colour scheme. Remember that this is what you will see on the finished product, so if you are putting a name on then it must be applied first and in reverse and the base colour is applied last. Set these painted sheets aside to dry before proceeding with the next step. Cutting Fibreglass Skins 13. I use 106gsm Glass cloth to skin the wings. For the centre panels, there is a diamond shaped doubler across the centre about 450mm wide on the top and about 300mm wide on the bottom. For the tip panels there is just one layer. All layers are applied at 45 degrees. 14. Do all your cutting on newspaper as it helps in the handling of the cut pieces and keeps the cloth in the correct shape. Roll the cloth out over a newspaper and place the painted Mylar sheet face down onto the cloth. 15. Using a straight edge over the Mylar cut the cloth. Use a roller cutter as it prevents any pulling of the cloth.
16. Flip the cut cloth and Mylar over so the paper is now on top. 17. Carefully remove the paper without disturbing the fibreglass cloth. Preparing the cores 18. Make a spar cap groove sanding block from MDF board with a 20mm wide strip of 100grit sandpaper glued in the middle of it. Mine is 150mm long x 50mm wide. Round off the ends of the wood so that it does not dig into the foam as you sand. 19. Sand a groove onto the wings high point by running the sanding block along a straight edge held onto the cores. 20. The 100grit sandpaper makes a groove just the right depth for the carbon tows to fit into without protruding above the groove.
Laying up the shear web and Carbon Sparscaps 21. The first job is to prepare the cores for the skins. Lightly remove any fine hairs left by the cutting wire. Be especially careful at the TE where the foam is very thin. 22. Mark out in the centre of the sanded grove where the pre-laminate shear web will be installed. 23. The pre-laminated shear web can be made from Glass, Carbon or even thin Plywood. I use two layers of 200gsm Carbon laminated together at 45 degrees on a sheet of glass. 24. Use a sharp blade held against a straight edge or your hot wire cutter and cut right through the core. 25. Mix enough epoxy adhesive to coat the pre-laminated shear web and use your fingers to coat it with a thin layer. 26. Insert the shear web between the front and back section of the core. Lay the core back into the outers so they align properly and tape across with masking tape to pull the pieces tightly together. Place the other outer core over and weigh down until the adhesive cures. NOTE. Be careful that the shear web is flush with the sanded grove in the foam
27. Now mix some epoxy laminating resin and brush some into the sanded groove. 28. Lay 12K carbon into the groove. For the centre panel I use about 12 to 16 tows on the top and 8 to 10 on the bottom. I cut 4 tows the full length and stagger the remaining tows along the span with the full compliment at the root. For the tips I taper the groove from 20mm to 10mm and lay the two outer tows first and stagger the others to fill the groove.on the tips I only use a max of 4 tows. 29. Put the first 4 tows down and pour a little resin onto the tows and brush or squeegee the resin into the carbon. Then the next 4 tows and more resin etc. 30. Make sure the carbon completely fills the groove and that they are properly wetted out. Wetting out the wing skins 31. Measure out enough resin to wet out the fabric. As a guide, the weight of the fabric should be approximately the same weight as the resin required
32. Pour some resin on the fibreglass cloth. Some experience will help you gauge how much to use but start with a squiggly line of resin poured along the middle of the cloth and add more as you need. 33. Squeegee the resin into the fibreglass cloth, starting from the middle and working outwards towards the edges. Working on newspaper helps soak up the excess that you squeegee off. But be careful not to let the excess resin dissolve the print on the paper and use that resin to wet out the fabric! It is important that you do not use too much resin. Squeegee as much resin away as you can so that the cloth is wet and you can see the weave. Do not leave pools of resin. A good quality squeegee helps but an old credit card works just as well. 34. It is now a simple matter of placing the wetted out sink onto the core and lining it up. I place the skin about 1mm back from LE and flush with the ends. The skin should protrude about 15mm to 20mm past the TE. 35. Rub it down so it sticks to the spar. Do all the skins and place then onto the cores, top and bottom and set them aside ready for the bagging process. Bagging 36. My vacuum pump is an old air conditioner compressor and has one of those vacuum regulators from a cars advance and retard thingy for the distributor with a normally open switch connected
to that. The whole lot sits on top of an old compressor vessel, which gives me a reservoir of vacuum so that the bag is emptied quickly at the start of the bagging process. 37. The vacuum bag should be big enough to accommodate the whole wing and is sealed on the ends with Tacki tape. The suction pipe must be protected from closing under pressure. I use one of those aerating stone for fish tanks and wrap it in paper towel. 38. Roll out some paper towel and place the wing onto it and then fold the paper towel back over the top. 39. Carefully pick up the wing and paper towel sandwich and place it into the bag. Place all the wing sections into the bag and make sure that the end of the suction pipe is covered with paper towel and that that is in contact with the paper towel over the wings. 40. Once all the wing sections are in the bag, seal the bag. 41. Start your vacuum and wait until the vacuum is achieved. Stop the pump as soon as you get vacuum.
42. Now place the bottom outer core under the bag and align the wings into them. 43. Now place the top outer cores over the wing and align with the wings in the bag. 44. Re-start your vacuum and check to see you are getting enough vacuum at the end of the bag furtherest from the suction pipe. You should just be able to pull the bag away from the foam. Too much vacuum and you risk squashing the wings. To little and the sinks will not adhere to the foam properly. 45. Place weights on top, make sure everything is well aligned and leave to cure overnight. Final finishing 46. 24hours later, remove the wings from the bag. 47. Start by removing the paper towel.
48. Gently ease the mylar away from the skin by starting in one corner and slowly working all the mylar loose from the entire skin. 49. If your waxing was properly done you should have no problems. 50. Place the wings into the bottom outer cores and line up the LE. Then make where the TE should be. 51. Lay the wing onto you work table and cut the TE off using a sharp blade against steel straight edge. 52. The final job is to clean up the ends of the wings where bits of paper towel are suck. When that is done, sand back to the foam, remembering to keep the dihedral angles correct.
Final assembly 53. Glue the panels together with epoxy, jigging the ends up at the correct dihedral angles and let the glue set. Then wrap the joints with a 30mm wide strip of fibreglass cloth and stick down with resin after you have sanded away the release agent next to the joints. Dust the wet resin with some micro balloons and let dry. Now all that is left to do is some final painting and touch ups and viola you have a wing. 54. And here is the proud owner with her new wing. 55. Four other identical wings in different colour schemes. All completed in just two weeks of +/- 2 hours per evenings with three weekends as well. The average weight of these wings is about 420 grams each and is 2 meters span by 230mm wide. The whole model weighs in at about 850 grams so the wing loading works out at about 19 to 20 grams per square decimetre.
The four Tsotsi s ready to fly