Add strength to foamies planes

The coolest thing happened last night. Many posts I've seen tell you that if you want to add shear strength to your foamie aircraft, you need to pray adhesive prior to covering it with packaging tape.

I'm afraid to say... that's half the truth!!!

You see, eventhough the tape will stick for a while any sharp flexing of the wing during flight will cause the rape to start stretching because it detached from the foam surface.
This caused the stretched tape to wrinkle up and no longer add structural strength to the foam.
So how do you prevent this from happening? Add heat. You see, with heat the glue of the adhesive tape is activated and the foam surface slightly softens to give you a strong bond.

So what temperature should one use? Well I did this part by trial and error. I found that a temperature of 80 degrees was sufficient to activate the adhesive and foam sticking to each other. I still feel that using a spray adhesive over the foam area gives a better chance for the tape to make a permanent bond.

So the long and short of it is that making use of a simple clothing Iron on adhesive tape can add substantial strength to your foamie design and insure that those crashes are not completely fatal.

Enjoy!

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