[Kedumba]

Experiments in Silk Covering

I'm at the stage of the build where I need to order some items so can't really continue with the assembly, so I thought I'd start to play around with the silk covering.

First step is to give the components several coats of Dope/Acetone mix. Here is a quick and dirty drying rack I made from a couple of wire coat hangers
   
From what I've read it can take a couple of days to cover a piece, including dope drying time.

This is the piece that I'm gonna start with, the vertical stabilizer.
   
It's had about 3 coats of dope/acetone and has been lightly sanded between coats.

Next step is to cut a piece of silk to the rough size and shape needed for the piece.
   

Next, the silk is soaked in water. I dunno why this step is nessecery but everything I've read seem to indicate that this is the way to do it.
   
This pic isn't the best. If you can't make it out, it's a red plastic bowel half filled with water, and the silk in the bottom of it.

Now the wet silk is laid over the piece to be covered and the messy part begins
   
Run a line of dope/acetone alone every part of the silk that touches the wood and with your fingers, massage the dope until it penetrates the silk and "mixes" with the dope in the wood. This is what forms the bond that holds the silk in place.

What you end up with is very very messy fingers and a piece that looks something like this:
   

Wait for it to dry, flip it over and repeat the process on the other side
   
and you finally end up with something that looks like the following image
   

Once it is dry, it's time to shrink the silk. This is done by painting the silk with the dope/actone mixture. Initially, the articules I read said to use a 50/50 mixture, but I found through experimentation that this actually dissolves the silk. Not quite the result I want, so I've cut back the acetone and it's now probbably closer to 70% dope/ 30% actone and seems to work ok.

After shrinking it looks something like this
   
Now I give it a coat of pure dope. I think this stops the shrinking process. Once it's dry it's ready for some final light sanding and trimming to clean it up.

This process is pretty tedious and seems to be a bit unforgiving and it's not hard to understand why most people prefer monocoat shrink for covering, but it gives a fantastic fabric texture and I think it will look stunning once it gets a couple of coats of spray paint