by mtaylor » Wed Feb 09, 2011 8:04 am
When I restored a Pitts years ago I had to piece in a strip of aluminum L.E. where some one had put in a landing light. (Can you imagine landing a Pittts at night?!) I did it the way your L.E. was done with a 1" backing strip and flush counter sunk rivets. You just need to be sure that, when driving the rivets, the L.E. is in the correct curvature that it will be in when installed on the wing. This way, the aluminum doesn't buckle. To prevent the seam from showing through the fabric, you can either fill and sand or use felt fabric over the L.E. before covering. The only difference is that you have to use the sock method to cover instead of a blanket method since you wouldn't be able to glue the front edge of the covering fabric to the wing since there's no solid surface to glue to.
When I restored a Pitts years ago I had to piece in a strip of aluminum L.E. where some one had put in a landing light. (Can you imagine landing a Pittts at night?!) I did it the way your L.E. was done with a 1" backing strip and flush counter sunk rivets. You just need to be sure that, when driving the rivets, the L.E. is in the correct curvature that it will be in when installed on the wing. This way, the aluminum doesn't buckle. To prevent the seam from showing through the fabric, you can either fill and sand or use felt fabric over the L.E. before covering. The only difference is that you have to use the sock method to cover instead of a blanket method since you wouldn't be able to glue the front edge of the covering fabric to the wing since there's no solid surface to glue to.