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Wood Prop LE protection and field repairs printer friendly version
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jb92563
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Location: Lake Elsinore, CA, USA
Registered: Mar 2007
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Posted Monday, March 5, 2012 @ 06:00 PM  

I have my brand new Culver 53x33 Prop mounted for no more than 30 minutes of ground running and 1 flight and the plastic
leading edge protection is well chewed up and probably needs to come off soon.

With that in mind I bought some 0.003" and 0.004" Stainless Steel sheet from Mcmaster-Carr and plan to protect the leading edge outer 12" of the blades.

I emailed Craig Catto of Catto props since they seem well versed in leading edge protection, and got a "suggestion" to use Devcon HP 250 epoxy to secure the Stainless LE protection. It apparently has much greater shear/peel strength and elasticity than regular epoxies.

Craig warned me that other plain epoxies are far too brittle and can not stand up in this application.
The HP 250 Epoxy is also on its way from Mcmaster-Carr.

I'll do some before/after shots and report on its effectiveness here in case anyone else needs to go that route.

The prop will also need a careful re-balancing with a sensitive but simple balancer.

LE Before Pictures: Pending

LE After Pictures: Pending

Before my first flight this weekend I was doing my walk around and found some prop repairs were in order before flying so I drove to the local supermarket and bought some instant glue (cyanoacrylate) and baking soda and proceeded to hard the damaged area and building up with the backing soda and more glue.

After a 5 minute cure I proceeded to sand the damaged areas back to their original contour and then go out and fly. Balancing should be done at the next opportunity but for a small repair you can get away without for a short while.

Total time of field repair was 30 minutes.

Field repair Picture: Pending

--------------------
Ray
RF4D #4057 N-1771 Rectimo 1400cc
http://picasaweb.google.com/jb92563/FournierRF4D
http://www.touringmotorgliders.org

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