Covering Can Take Time
John C. McKenna
I had just finished dinner on a rainy weeknight. I realized that most of my chores were finished and that I had the evening to myself. The Giant Stinger that I was currently building was to the point of covering, so I thought, "now is the time to begin the covering process." I made a cup of coffee and went into the shop.
Covering is the part of model building that is the most challenging to me, and to do it right can take time. Cutting, sanding, and fitting balsa and foam is the easy part. Even fitting the electronics and hardware are parts of the process that are straightforward to me.
As I turned to place the 84-inch Stinger wing on a small table to begin the MonoKote® covering, I knocked over a Styrofoam® cup full of large and small T-pins, scattering them over the shop floor. As I bent over to pick up the pins, I moved the table just enough for the extra-long roll of covering to fall and unroll its full length, creating a pretty cream runner down the middle of my shop.
Now on my hands and knees, I reached up with a couple of handfuls of T-pins and put them in the cup—my coffee cup, not the foam cup!
At this point I invented a 26-letter cussword that kind of had a nice ring to it. As a sort of revenge, I let the pins soak in the coffee for a while. I plugged in the heating iron on the workbench in preparation for covering.
Tidying up a bit, I moved the wing drawing to the workbench and began rolling up the MonoKote®, stepping on it only once, at about the center, where it was now embossed by two large T-pins that were under it. I uttered more profanities that Webster had never heard of.
Startled out of my frustration by a whiff of smoke, I turned around and noticed a widening brown spot on my wing drawing. You may have guessed by now: it was laying across the hot covering iron. I unplugged the iron, saved the scorched drawing, and counted to ten, skipping a couple of numbers.
Turning to locate my scissors, I banged my head on an open cabinet door. It took a couple of minutes for the stars to dissolve and the lump to grow.
Curiously, this did not anger me. There was beginning to be a hint of our gang comedy to all of this. Was it the low pressure associated with the storm front? I grabbed my half-full cup of coffee and was able to turn the shop lights off without incident. I went into the house. After all, "tomorrow's another day," I thought. The alignment of stars and planets was not right for this kind of project.
Later that evening, my wife asked if I would look at the garbage disposal; it was making weird noises. She had poured the cold coffee down the sink. Although it's time-consuming, an automotive magnet bolt-retriever works great for removing T-pins from garbage disposals.
As I said, this business of covering can take time.
MA John C. McKenna 8670 Springhill Dr. Poland, OH 44514
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
