Originally Posted by
aviator79
This seems to imply the glue is mandatory and the lacing optional. I believe the inverse is true - you need to lace regardless of whether you glue or not. The Poly Fiber manual actually says "You won't cement fabric to the ribs themselves, since later you'll use rib lacing or some other mechanical means to hold the fabric to the ribs..."
The Kitfox manual agrees with John in that the instructions explicitly tell you to bond to the capstrips, but also say that "Poly-Fiber and Kitfox recommend that you secure the fabric to the rib capstrips by rib stitching". Acutally, Kitfox might recommend it, but Poly-Fiber requires it, and uses 3 paragraphs in the manual to emphasize that it is required.
edit... I assume the Oratex instructions require gluing. So you should glue. But unless there is strong evidence that Oratex adhesives resist peel loads in a vastly superior sense than Poly-Tak, even after 20 years, then you should follow Poly-Fiber's advice, even if you're using Oratex.