D C Fix & Fablon vinyl for covering.

There is such a vast amount of Scratch Builders within the FT Family that at times I feel it  is hard to produce an article that hasn't been done or a subject that hasn't been covered  (pardon the pun!!) already..That being said,I think this has already been done but the result's I have achieved have been rather impressive so far so here is my tuppence worth on a great covering method. 

My first attempt of using Fablon vynil was on my Piper Cherokee,I had limited success as the tail didn't cover as well as I would have liked.

This was only a partial covering also using checkered packing tape.

Piper Cherokee

By this point I was intrigued as to the potential of using Fablon so I tried again,this time with an old favourite of mine.....

Again the overall results were good but again those tight corners on the tail....not so much!

Baby Blender

I was convinced this was the way to go forward and taking what I had learned so far,tried again but this time on something a little bigger.....

This is my own design P51-B done out in race colours,I wanted to try a more complicated design both in covering and form. 

At first glance it looks quite good,I was impressed at first then the tail issue rose up again !!

P51-B Mustang

On a visit to a local home improvement store (B&Q), I came across vinyl,D-C-Fix vinyl....worth a shot I thought....boy was I right....

This stuff is ace ! finally the tail issue had been resolved,this model has had a mod done to the tail which makes the trailing edges around 2mm thick with the leading edges rounded off,covered them both perfectly.

The above mentioned tail mod...

FT P51 Mustang

 Conclusion

So firstly where can you get this amazing stuff ?? Amazon of course or if you're here in the UK,B&Q or hobbycraft.

It's vinyl therefore completely waterproof .

It adds a vinyl hinge too all your control surfaces and it wont rip giving you more strength on your hinges.

Overall it doesn't add too much weight.

When covering using vinyl I found the use of heat is very helpfull,I used my worshop heater to soften the vinyl as i was working with it,Fablon needs more heat as it is thicker and therefore less pliable round tighter angles.This I feel was what was causing the issue on the tail surfaces.

D-C-Fix is in my opinion,the best of both for covering and tight angles,a little heat and it acts a little like Solarfilm in so much as it shrinks ever so slightly which makes it perfect for the tail..

see above and below.

Obviously,great care is required as although these vinyl's are removable from a solid surface,not so much from foamboard as I found out,it will remove the paper if it gets a good hold.

The down side to this so far is I prefer D-C-Fix for the base covering but they are limited in their choice of colours so a camo warbird is not possible using their product alone,however using a mixture of Fablon and D-C-Fix is most definately do-able.

So too finish off,here's a video of me covering one half of the wing on the P51 and some pictures of the finished bird.

Thanks for stopping by ;-)

cheers