well, after i posted this question, i went down to talk to our shop manager about sealants in general. he told me that we have some, and just take what you need!!! uh...OK!
i still may need to buy some in the future, but for the rudder trailing edge, what we have should work.
I went to the local airport to see if could grab some Flame Master quickly. They wanted $150.00 for the quart. I drove to Vans and got the six ounce for under $15.00, they have the quart size for under $40.00.
I have a question though. How long is the pot life of mixed Flame Master?
The Mil-Spec is the standard. It depends on which flavor you get.
The B-2 stuff we use on tanks is supposed to have a 2 hour pot life, with all parameters (temp, humidity, properly mixed, etc.) taken into consideration.
Check out Paul Trotter's .pdf file on the subject!
Spike, I thought you uploaded that to the resources page. I can't find it!?!
CJ
RV-7
Garmin G3X with VP-X & a TMX-IO-360 with G3i
It's all over but the flying! 800+ hours in only 3 years!
I'm thinking of thinning the Flame Master with Toluene and trying to paint it on to the AEX trailing edge wedge. I talked on the phone with the folks down in Burbank Calif. that make the stuff and the guy I talked to said to thin only with 5% Toluene. I noticed in pauls paper he said 15% was OK for thinning I think I may just trust the higher number as the max. amount to thin the adhesive. Flame Master officials probably try to be pretty conservative when dispensing information to people they don't know. By the way, even though I had the guy on the phone I still forgot to ask him about the pot life of tank sealant. Thanks for that answer CJ and thanks for the link to the other info.
As far as "extending" pot life is concerned... when I am between tasks, I toss the mixed stuff that I am working with in the fridge. This slows the process down quite a bit. Especially during these hot days we have been having!
I think that I prefer working with proseal over painting!
It really isn't THAT bad.
CJ
RV-7
Garmin G3X with VP-X & a TMX-IO-360 with G3i
It's all over but the flying! 800+ hours in only 3 years!
The number in the sealant type is the working life of the mixed sealant. Therefore a B2 sealant would have a working life of 2 hours. This is in ideal conditions however, and it is affected by temperature and humidity. Higher temperature and higher humidity reduce working life. As John said, you can extend the working life a little by putting the mixed sealant in the fridge, but is is best to just mix what you can use in about an hour (assuming you are using B2 sealant). Now if you can cool it to -40, it will keep for quite awhile:-)
As for thinning, I am told that 15% is the maiximum amount of toluene that can be added without changing the characteristics of the sealant. I doubt if you will ever need to get close to that amount. I believe that the A version of the sealant has about 7% toluene added and that brushes on quite nicely.
It is also a good idea to store unmixed sealant in a cool dry location or else the shelf life can be considerably reduced. I had some tubes of unmixed sealnt go bad this summer that were well within the shelf life, but they were stored in a fairly warm, humid location.
The glue job is done. I have to say that thinning Flame Master makes it spread OK but it was still weird and slow to work with. The good news was I didn't get it all over myself. That was in and of itself a challenge. I'm going to write and include pics in a short instructional format for this web to be posted in the near future.
thanks jim! i be watching for it. i'll probably be ready to do the trailing edge this week or next weekend. the skeleton is going together this weekend.