Re: Gelcoat Crazing and Structural Integrity

On Mar 5, 2:21 pm, "Ken Kochanski (KK)" <kkbusin...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hi,

My first glass glider was a cheap, but well-crazed, 15 meter ship that
I flew for 5 years before trading up to a newer model.

Other then potential performance issues (if not sanded smooth) ... do
we have any cases where moderate/heavy crazing led to damage to the
underlying glass ... which grounded the ship at annual -  or which
caused an in flight failure.

Hi Ken,
I have been grinding out gelcoat cracks for 35 years and never found
any of them that didn't stop at the fiferglass structure. On ships
with thick gelcoat (DG's) the 'working' back & forth on each side of a
large crack can leave an etched mark in the fiberglass structure, but
examination with a magnification glass shows no broken fibers, just
resin that has flaked away in the emmediate area adjacent to the
crack. I have found that painting on a fresh coat of resin will make
this 'etched' make disappear. I know of no inflight failuers caused
from simple gelcoat cracks. I believe it's a good idea to have your
local glider repair guy take a look to be sure your crack isn't a tell-
tail indicator of underlying structure that has moved (failed).


If you have crazing, but sand and wax the ship occasionally - does
this provide sufficient protection - say for 5 years - until you got

Yes

around to refinishing.

thanks,

KK

.

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