Original Posted By: "Dick Navratil"
All this talk about fabric tautness is of great interest for me at the moment. One thing I've seen over and over in the Poly-Fiber manual is that if you overtemp your iron (over 350F, for Poly-Fiber), you will not only NOT increase the tautness, you will permanently lose what it already has. Think "melt", "yield", or "plastic deformation"! I'm assuming that when Steve E. mentioned 375F, he was not referring to Poly-Fiber ("Stits"), but something else.According to the Poly-Fiber manual, you cannot hurt the fabric by leaving the iron sitting on any one spot or by ironing it too much, as long as you are running your iron below that 350F number and it's a calibrated iron. Use 225 to 250F for heat-smoothing and initial tautening, then cranking up to 325 and to a max of 350F as is required for any STC'd fabric job. At least that's what the book says... my only experience so far is in covering one vertical stabilizer, but I didn't want to have to do it twice so I've read the book quite a few times along the way!As Stevee mentioned, the tautened fabric won't have that drum-head feel until you apply the coatings. Then the whole thing becomes a uniform membrane rather than an assembly of individual strands and it takes on that nice drummy feel.Oscar ZunigaSan Antonio, TXmailto: taildrags(at)hotmail.comwebsite at http://www.flysquirrel.net________________________________________________________________________________