Q-talk 98 - Clean Composite Surfaces
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- Category: Q-Talk Articles
- Published: Wednesday, 23 December 2009 16:24
- Written by Mike Bergen
- Hits: 2523
Shop Rags
Even if the bag of cotton rags declares they have been washed. I do not believe them. There still may be some type of material contaminating the rag that could be transferred to my plane and cause problems. To avoid this potential issue. I only use blue paper-based shop tow els on the composite surfaces.
Testing Your Composite Surface for Contaminants
I do one very simple test to make sure my cured composite surfaces arc truly clean and have no contaminants on them before I do surface prep or bond additional glass structures. Using a clean eye-dropper. I place a few drops of DISTILLED water on the surface in question. If it beads up. there is a problem. If it flows away in sheets, the surface is clean. I only use distilled water for this test because other forms of bottled water may have residues that skew the results.
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