Covering, using a wrap

Question for you all:

I am covering my horizontal stab and rudder today. I am trying to use a single piece of fabric for each in a wrap mode.

Mi intial thought here is to glue it to the non-hinge ends and have the non glued wrap on the large tube diameter (hinge tube).

Is this correct? If so, when you glue to the two halves together (first half is already glued and dried) how do you keep puckering from happening (i.e. it glues beyond the 90 degree point on the tube as the fabric it is being glued to is not yet shrunk?

I did my elevator using a two piece method (bottom and then top) and didnt have this issue as I was gluing the second sheet to a shrunk fabric.

Larry S.

larry , i used one piece of fabric and wrapped around the straight tubes and glued to that first . then trimmed the fabric for the curved parts . i cut v s up to the tubes as not to cause pucker . doing the elevators and stab , glue the bottoms first then the top over that for appearances . the over lap will show through the finish tape . better to have the overlap on the lower surface where its not so noticeable . the manual actually shows the procedure pretty well .

Thanks Chuck. Took that approach and it worked great. :)

It sounds like you have completed your covering so this is really for those who have yet to reach that stage.

This topic is one of those areas that makes going to a Sportair workshop really worth while. Even a freebie workshop like the ones put on by Polyfiber at Oshkosh are a great help when it comes to covering.


You will learn techniques and how to wrap a surface around a curved trailing edge using your iron to shrink and form compound curves. At one of the workshops they had a softball that was covered with just two pieces of fabric shrunk around it.


To help you now, just know that you can pull and stretch around curves with the help of an iron. Pull the fabric tight and tack it down on the upper surface. Trim the fabric leaving enough to wrap around with about 4 to 6 inches to spare so you will have some material to grip. Then using the iron pull and stretch around the curve. Just keep working the fabric with the iron until you have it wrapped all the way around. Then neatly trim the excess and tack it down. When you do the second side draw a pencil line 2 inches ahead of the trailing edge on the first side to use as a guide for trimming the fabric. Apply Polytack up to the pencil line. When you have pulled and formed the second side trim the fabric to your pencil line. Iron the overlap flat.

There is a lot of knowledge out there on covering. Ask around at you local airport. Look at fabric covered airplanes to see how they treated corners and compound curves. Look at details like reinforcing tapes. Note how straight the seams and cut lines are formed.

Again, there is nothing that beats hands on experience. I can't overstress the value of a workshop when it comes to covering.

john is certainly correct . the workshops are worthwhile , saves a lot of time and fabric over the trial and error method . once a person has done a little fabric work , you can look at a covered airplane and appreciate the time ,skill and patience that it requires to produce and nice looking cover job .
well said john