Ray Fuenzalida wrote: A couple of other builders were looking > at what I was doing and both recommended that I use a marine varnish on the > bolts before I put them through the spars. If not, they said that the AN > bolts would delaminate and rot the wood spars from the inside.
I think the Newsletters have a lot on that, and it's common practice to put epoxy (varnish would work, but you've already got epoxy) into the hole with a swab or similar, and let it soak in a few minutes before inserting bolts. I have disassembled a few spar attach fittings from salvaged airplanes, and they are difficult to remove, with no delamination in sight. If you dunked the spars in water several times a day that's possible, but the spars stay very dry inside that fiberglass box. For those who don't know, the Newsletters are at http://www.krnet.org/newsletter/, and are a wealth of information on KR construction and performance. They're also a great way to kill several hundred hours of building time, so skim them now for what interests you (there are a couple of indexes in there, and they are searchable PDFs), but I'd recommend saving the full-blown immersion for wintertime when it may be too cold to work on your KR... Mark Langford ML at N56ML.com http://www.n56ml.com
