Rebuild Thread - EF 104 Extra

flyingpete wrote: Nice work Jon! Nice to see you are not frightened of a bit of major surgery on a model, as many would have binned it :woohoo:

Thanks Pete, there are a few reasons I'm doing it, the model is too good to bin, I quite enjoy the challenge and I'm too tight to buy the spare parts

Inspirational work Jon - just shows what can be achieved with a potential write off.

When I had to re-glue the wing tube on the Giles I smeared the joiner with silicon polish, assembled the wing to the fuse and rotated the joiner periodically while the glue set. The epoxy wicked through the glass fibre wing tube and would have stuck the joiner fast without doing this. I don't know whether you can reconstruct the wing sufficiently to be able to do this.

Just looked at your pictures on the rebuild stages. Very professional Jon. Well Done

Great job so far! As Pete said many would have binned it. That includes me

Thanks for the comments chaps Haven't managed to get much time on this for the last couple of weeks but hope to get back on it over Easter, will update again when I've got some progress to show

Just goes to show that in the 70's and 80's when kits had to be built from scratch or die cut parts at best, before CNC and laser cutting, developed skills honed from experience that seem to be lost in the present day of total ARTF. Congratulations on a really skilled rebuild, skills once learnt will always stay with you. Really well done Jon, look forward to the re-maiden in due course.

Been back on it this week at last.

Next job was remake the root rib, this is laminated from 2mm ply and balsa, cut out by hand using the bits left over as a pattern, filling in missing bits by taking dimensions from the other wing. Once made I had to make sure the incidence pins and wing tube lined up with the fusleage accurately, I mounted the rib using the aluminium pins, then using the wing tube and a pencil I covered the end with lencil lead and used it to mark the root rib.

These photos show all of the remade internal parts complete, then assembly into the wing, I managed to copy some of the original location tabs to make sure everything lined up correctly.

I assembled everything dry, then when happy wicked this cyano into the joints.

You will see that there was a reasonable amount of damage to the bottom wing skin from these pictures, this would be dealt with as one of the next jobs!

Next, the root rib went in, followed by the aluminium incidence pegs and the the balsa spar webbing facing the ply pieces

Next I tackled the wing tube liner repair. As mentioned earlier in the thread, I was concerned about this as I had to do it with the wing tube in to ensure it kept it's shape, I was right to be concerned as it nearly caught me out.

Using part of the original broken wing tube, I covered it with silicon grease then inserted it into the tube being careful not to snag the broken edges of the liner tube which is made from very thin glass cloth. I then took some wing skinning cloth, cutting small pieces, laying them on then soaking in this CA. While I did this I kept rotating the carbon tube to make sure it didn't bond, I wasn't expecting it to bond with the silicon grease layer, but when I tried to rotate it I couldn't :ohmy: Luckily by turning it as hard as I could it broke free before the glue really had time to properly bond, there was much relief!! Had I not been able to release it, it would have been a disaster

It was really surprising that the glue bonded through the layer of grease, lesson learnt and luckily no harm done.

The repair was successful in the end.