My only experience with a cautery some years ago was having built my
first LPP I covered it with film and went happily on to cut the film -
much to my surprise, what happened was the balsa wing spars burst into
flame - I immediately realized that cherry red was no good.
I now use a small soldering iron I got from Great Planes than has a tip
that will take an X-Acto knife blade for cutting plastic. I took the #11
blade out and use a length of heavy copper wire in it's place. That does
a nice job of cutting the film and has the side benefit of no fires in my
messy workshop - never a bad thing <G>
LeRoy Cordes
in Downstate Illinois
In God We Trust
On Thu, 31 May 2012 20:00:26 +0300 Tapio Linkosalo
<tapio.linkosalo_at_iki.fi> writes:
> On 31.5.2012 16:04, ray_harlan wrote:
> > I use cauteries just for field repairs. At home, I use a very old
> Ungar
> > wood-burning tool I got a a kid. It has a long conical tip that
> comes to
> > nearly a point. I don't know the wattage (labels weren't required
> in
> > those days). But any 25 to 40 watt soldering iron that can take a
> long,
> > thin tip should do well. You could file down a copper tip in a
> drill
> > press to get a suitable film cutter.
>
> I have used a 25 watt iron so far, but the tip tends to melt the
> film,
> not burn through it, leaving thick residues on the outline.
> Therefore I
> thought a cautery would be better in this respect. Hotter than the
> soldering iron?
>
>
>
> -Tapio-
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
LeRoy Cordes
in Downstate Illinois
In God We Trust
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Received on Sat Jun 02 2012 - 07:24:54 CEST