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Can we talk about the new composite patch adhesive from AeroBond that sets in 20 minutes?
I was chatting with a retired FAA inspector at the diner near the hangar yesterday, and he flat out said, 'That fast-cure stuff is great until you realize it's masking a bad surface prep job,' which hit different because I just rushed a repair on a Cessna 172 flap using it last week.
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lucaslee6mo ago
That retired inspector's point about masking bad prep is technically true, but how often is it really the adhesive's fault? A 20-minute cure gives you a tight working window, but if you're slopping it on a dirty surface, any adhesive would fail. The real issue is people skipping steps, not the product itself. I've seen slow-cure epoxies fail for the same reason when guys rush.
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joelwells6mo ago
Read an article last year where a lab tested a bunch of adhesives on poorly prepped surfaces. The fast ones failed spectacularly, but the slow ones just took longer to fall off. It all came down to the bond line. If the prep is bad, you're just gluing dirt to dirt. The speed might change when you notice the problem, but it doesn't change the cause.
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reese_lee296mo ago
But how many failures are we actually seeing? It sounds like a problem that mostly happens when people cut corners.
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