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What do you use to to clean the ribs with ? I used acetone to remove the fabric but it does not seem to do anything to the old glue covering the paint.. I don't know about sand or.bead blasting . I don't want to use something that damage the ribs .Thanks for any ideas you may have.
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I use peroxide paint remover. Everything washes right off. -
I used a professional metal stripper in Portland, Oregon. Wasn't that expensive and saved a lot of time. They were ready for primer when I got them home.Comment
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thanks for the infoComment
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Bruce, which one did you use and was it listed as safe for aluminum or did you do some experimenting?
Hank
I have a BUNCH of ribs I should be stripping so I can prime and repair them for pack up. These wreck wings take up a LOT of space!Comment
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When I did mine they were unpainted but had old crud from the spars being re-varnished, old recover jobs (last was in 1973) and so they had bits of crud on them. I went the soda blasting route. Baking soda works well on Aluminium but then there needs to be good hot water bath to make sure none of the material is left microscopicly in pits or cracks. After a proper wash, I bathed in Alodyne and reassembled with no further painting.
This is my standard prep for Aluminium now, except that some parts get epoxy primer and paint. I figured the ribs had gone all those years with bare metal from the factory so why paint them? For what its worth...
Skip Egdorf
N34237Skip Egdorf
TF #895
BC12D N34237 sn7700Comment
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Skip, I have used bead blast and it also works well. There is a material called "Black Beauty" that is out as a replacement for sand (which I would STRONGLY recommend to replace sand because of the Silica dust) but I think it is too course for thin aluminum. I may try some on a few parts too destroyed to repair and see what it does to them. I also want to remind everyone to NEVER use any blast material on aluminum that has been used before on steel or any other iron based material. The tiny bits of iron will embed in the aluminum and cause corrosion. I have TWO blast cabinets, one for aluminum ONLY!!! and one for ferrous materials. As for Magnesium it should be blasted with high explosives. I hate the stuff. Strong and light but corrodes if you look at it wrong. ;-)
Hank
Of course I also live close to the Atlantic coast. A 2x4 will rust here!
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Hank, I did some experimenting with some smaller parts and they came out beautiful so I have had several parts done. I used American Metal Cleaners. They have a good website. I'm not sure about shipping to them but if you need a middle man, let me know..Comment
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Bruce, their site looks like you ship to them and they do the work. That would get expensive and complex with a pile of aluminum wing ribs. Looks GREAT for a steel tube fuselage, but I would want to be there IMMEDIATELY after cleaning to evaluate all the repair requirements and to put a preservative coat on everything. Dipping is great for getting all the coats off but locally I had to blast my fuselage in sections and prime IMMEDIATELY after wiping the blast area off because the salt air around here would start surface rust in just a few hours. I miss the salt free dry air of the mid west at those times!
Hank
From salt air SE Virginia neat the Atlantic!Comment
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I would never dip a fuselage to remove old chromate or paint. Reason being, many years ago a friend of mine had his fuselage dipped and it looked great. He put zink chromate on it and put it in dry storage in his shop. After several years he started to notice a couple spots of crap on the floor. After close inspection the tubing was eat through from the inside out. I replaced many tubes on it for him and did some exploratory drilling and found several more tubes that had the dipping solution inside the that hadn't eat a hole yet. We think we got all the bad tubes replaced and serviced with tube seal, but I don't think I would be very comfortable trusting it for the long haul. I would recommend the labor intensive and safe way of hand stripping or lightly blasting it with the right blasting media. Evidently there was a opening someplace in his frame that let the stripper solution inside the tubing. This is my opinion and experience with dipping a fuselage.Comment
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I apologize for getting off topic. It just dawned on me the topic is about wing ribs and not a fuselage. My mistake.Comment
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Not at all! There is a solid connection if you are restoring a plane!
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The "rib fest" as I called it was one of the most difficult times of CF-CLR's restoration. Cleaning, repairing, treating and priming seemed to go on forever and I'd leave the shop after a long hard day without seeing any progress.
I tried paint stripper (the no longer readily available nasty stuff) media blasting, mechanical cleaning and solvents. What I found was that time is your friend. Just like the wife says about burnt-on food in the pan, just let it soak!
I made a long shallow tray from a 6" hvac duct. Filled it with laquer thinner (cheapest/strong enough solvent) and soaked each rib overnight or while I got on with other things. Cover the whole thing so the solvent doesn't evaporate.
That made removing the layers of masking tape, glue, dope etc relatively easy. Then I used 80 grit aluminium oxide in my blasting cabinet to clean off light corrosion, residual primer etc. Don't get too close with the nozzle, depending on the power of the media blaster you could deform the material.
After media blasting each rib was soaked in alumiprep, rinsed then soaked in alodine for 10-15 minutes again using the tray. For this you can also just scew some 1x2s to the bench and line with poly.
After the conversion coating epoxy primer was applied.
Scott
CF-CLR Blog: http://c-fclr.blogspot.ca/Comment
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