MY-14 rear fuselage covering

Suomeksi

The rear fuselage plywood covering of the three fuselages (MY-5, -9 and -14), which were at the disposal of the VL Myrsky II restoration project, has completely disappeared, so the MY-14 received a completely new covering.

The MY-14 belonged to the so-called main series (Myrsky II) and the blueprints for its rear fuselage have disappeared. The early blueprint of the prototype (Myrsky), the test series (Myrsky I), and the early main series, used for the MY-5 and MY-6, has been preserved. According to it, the rear fuselage has been covered with 1,2 mm shreds of diagonal plywood joined with scarf joints.

By examining photographs a means of covering used in later main series aircraft was found. There seven diagonal plywood sheets were used, with grading in the horizontal seams.

Because diagonal plywood isn’t available, we made it by joining together plywood sheets sawn into triangular shape and glued with scarf joints. The sheets obtained in this way were roughly sawed into shape and then fitting them to final measurements. Gluing was done with Gorilla Glue and the necessary pressure was obtained by using stretch film, clamps at the edges and staples in other places. Originally the staples were used at 20 mm partition.

For the first plywood sheets the inner painting was done after the gluing, but the last ones had to be painted before gluing. In the latter case the patches to be glued were drawn on the plywood and only the areas between the lines were painted beforehand. After the gluing the remaining areas were painted, if possible. The used paint was Temalac by Tikkurila and the shade was RAL 7005.

External priming was done according to the original advice with alkyd primer, where about 50% aluminium powder was added to the first layer. After this the fuselage was painted twice over with the same paint but without the aluminium powder. Between the coats of paint the surfaces were given primary sanding and puttied where necessary, using Spakkeli which is the Tikkurila wood putty. As a primer Futura 3-solvent thinned primer, shade RAL 7005 was used.

The blog is based on the report and photographs produced by the Finnish Air Force Museum restoration group.

Translation by Matti Liuskallio.