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Wing Tip Lens

MED

Well Known Member
FYI - Do not use a Sharpie to mark the cut lines in the wing tip light lenses. Isopropyl alcohol won?t remove them! Fortunately, ethanol will, with time and flooding. Took me twenty minutes to get rid of the marks. :mad:
 
Good idea. Now, if I could only find one . . . No luck at Staples, Walmart, Publix. I?ll try Home Depot next.
 
I use fineline flexible vinyl tape. It can be stretched to go around compound curves and it can be applied and removed and reapplied if you need to tweak it a bit.
 
It's been a couple of years, but I believe that I was able to remove sharpie marks with mineral spirits. MS are a preferred solvent for cleaning acrylic; I used it on the whole canopy to get rid of the adhesive from the covering.

Larry
 
It's been a couple of years, but I believe that I was able to remove sharpie marks with mineral spirits. MS are a preferred solvent for cleaning acrylic; I used it on the whole canopy to get rid of the adhesive from the covering.

Larry

Thanks for the suggestion, but I tried mineral spirits on the way to ethanol. It didn't work. My wife suggested hairspray, but she didn't have any for me to try.
I didn't have a problem with the first lens, but I guess I just got lucky and didn't have any marks in the middle of the lens that I needed to remove.

By-the-way, Home Depot has grease pencils. They call them China Markers. Not a very clean line, but they don't cause any damage and the marks are easy to remove. I may try the fine line tape if I ever have to do this again.

Thanks for the suggestions from everyone.
 
Suggestion - do NOT use Acetone to clean stray epoxy off of your wingtip lenses (or canopy, I expect).

Bad things happen.
 
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Minor thread drift here, but, so long as we're talking about the wingtip lenses, how exactly should one cut them?

I'm thinking of a cutoff wheel (perhaps a little one in a Dremel), but am open to other suggestions.
 
The wing tip lens material does not cut like the canopy plexiglas. It melts with a Dremel cut-off wheel or sanding drum. The best way I came up with to cut it was with a Japanese pull saw. Then, trim to the line with a sharp block plane. There must be an easier/faster way, but I couldn't find it. These lenses were a slow, tedious process to fabricate and fit and they still did not come out as well as I had hoped. I am not too thrilled with attaching them with only two screws, according to the plans, either. Good luck.
 
Lenses

You can cut the material with tin snips, believe it or not. Then sand to final shape. The two screw fastening system works well. Never heard of one falling off.
 
WD40

WD-40, the oil. It will remove stuff similar to MEK but without hurting the plexiglass or the painted finish. Not as powerful as MEK but for some reason WD-40 removes glue, ink, grease, icky stuff and leaves the underlying finish alone.
 
Hardware store Kerosene will work. I have used on delicate materials...Goof off is 70% Kerosene...Check on a discarded piece to ensure it does not craze the material, shouldn't.
 
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