Tank sealing
Ah, the joys of proseal. My first pass with the grey goo was a mess. The first task was to seal the tank stiffeners. I ended up spreading the proseal onto the stiffener with a tong depressor. That wasn’t so bad, but trying to form a fillet around the edges of the stiffeners in this was almost impossible. After I was done with this I regained my composure and hatched a different plan for the next round.
Next up was to do the stiffeners on the other tank. This time I carefully scooped up the mixed proseal (about 30 grams) with a tong depressor and loaded it into the open end of a syringe (30ml with the tip drilled out to about 1/8″) with the plunger removed. I had previously tried sucking it up through the tip but that was never going to work for me. Loading a syringe is the only way to go. It made things so much easier in both preparation and application. This time, I just squeezed the right amount of goo onto the stiffeners, spread it with the tong depressor and riveted it on. The edge fillets were also a snap to do. It couldn’t be any easier than dispensing from the tip of a syringe. I also learned, through trial and the advise of a fellow builder, it is best to remove any booger from the tip of an inserted rivet before trying to drive it as a bucking bar will slip and slide on the proseal (not good). I cut up some paper towels into little squares to use as quick wipes dipped in MEK for every little spot of stray proseal. This keeps things from getting out of control. I go through a full stack of these little squares each session.
Next, I was ready to start sealing tank ribs. Tanya and I completed two ribs in a little under two hours (there are 14 ribs). Once again, the syringe method is the only way to go. They were much easier to cleco in after being dimpled and prosealed.
In between all of this stuff, I spent a bunch of time deburring holes on the main wing ribs in prep for dimpling. All main skins are now off for a while. I’m jumping around doing little stuff, deburring and dimpling, in between when Tanya can help proseal tank ribs. It really does go a lot easier with two people.
