Skin dimpling

[Fghuegel]

Greetings. I’m just getting started on my Sling Tsi build. I have the horizontal stabilizer skeleton completed and have a question regarding dimpling of the skins. I’ll be using a DRDT2. I noticed in one of Evan Bruner’s that he unfolds the skin to about 90 degrees to do the dimpling. It seems to me that you just about have to do that to get the job done. I was wondering what technique is used to safely open up the skins. I’m concerned about bending them out of shape. Any suggestions?

[ibgarrett]

Hmm. I’d have to go back and watch his videos to see about the 90 degree thing. If it’s the parts I’m thinking of it’s probably the corners of the wings/empennage where the metal is already got a significant bend for the leading edges.

There shouldn’t be any parts you should have to bed 90 degrees off center that aren’t already pre-formed. Yes there are a couple of tight spots, but nothing that should damage the material when dimpling.

[Fghuegel]

Thanks for the reply. The place where Evan demonstrated the skin dimpling was about 10 min, 30 seconds into his second video. I’m not sure which skin he’s dimpling there, looks like it might be a wing skin. Anyway, I’m just concerned about being able to reach the areas that need to be dimpled in the front of the skin. It seems like I’ll need to open up the skins a fair amount from their preformed shape to reach those areas. I guess I’ll just have to give it a try and see what works. Thanks.

[ibgarrett]

Yup. I did the complete build following Evans instructions. Just be careful and you’ll be fine. The skin has quite a bit of flexibility so it’s just about paying attention and it works.

[lutorm]

I was just going through this recently, too. It's really not a problem bending the skins a lot, You just can't bend it sharply at any given point. If you just use your hands and have them far apart so the bend is gradual, it's not that easy to permanently bend the skins.