Strut finishing

Posted On January 1, 2012

One of the projects that never got done originally was to finish the air-foiled strut coverings. They are made from ABS plastic and snap over the steel struts. Then they need to be finished to look good.

This process is a bit involved.

• First up removing the struts from the wings, building wing stands to hold the wing in place while the strut is off.
• Sanding down the struts with 80 girt on a power sander. This is to remove all of the tooling marks and get a nice smooth airfoil shape.
• Filling and shaping the section where the two struts join together is a major project itself. I used spray foam to fill in the empty space, then cut that level and filled the area with epoxy filler. This was sanded and filled until smooth and shaped properly.
• Lastly I covered the area with polyfiber fabric and filled and sanded until everything was smooth.
• I painted the entire struts with polyspray to give the ABS some UV protection before final paint.
• Final paint was white polytone to match the other parts on the plane.