delaminated skin
I know this has probably been beaten to death, but I have a question. has anyone remove the fiber glass skin, like on a slide out. my T/T is a Fleetwood Pegasus 2005 its in perfect condition was store...
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I re-laminated the front cap and a few feet of both sides of the nose of our previous TC.
I found a 1/8 inch sheet of plywood door skin at a local lumber store that was just the right thickness. The TC was mostly aluminum framed.
The front cap was laminated to a very heavy card board which allowed it to bend. It was fastened to the camper only around the outer perimeter. Removed and laid it out on the shop floor. Scraped and sanded the residue off without damaging the filon. Probably 2 hours of sanding.
The sides were laminated to plywood. What I found was that the delamination was the separation and swelling of the plywood layers. One layer of the plywood was still solidly bonded to the filon, which I suspect will be the same with yours.
I carefully pulled the skin back and removed all the wet plywood. This left about a 1/16 inch layer of the plywood on the filon. It took 3 or 4 days with skin pulled back to allow the remaining plywood to dry.
When dry, I gently sanded the ply of wood still on the filon, cut the 1/8 door skin to fit the shape of the void and glued it in.
When bonded to the wood already on the filon it was very near the same thickness of the original plywood.
In your case you'll need to lay the filon out on a flat surface and gently remove any double ply layers. As long as you don't have any high spots the actual difference in plywood thickness won't matter since you'll be doing the complete slide wall.
I used polyurethane adhesive (gorilla glue) which is what the manufacturer had used originally. It is moisture cured and reacts fairly quickly.
I used 3/4 inch particle board to make "pressure plates" to hold the filon flat while the glue cures which only take a short time. When polyurethane starts to cure it foams up and will separate the materials if you don't compress it. I used 6 tires and wheels laying on top of the 4 x 8 foot sheet of particle board. Not sure how much weight that was but it worked well.
Take it easy and don't get too aggressive with the scraper and sander and you shouldn't have too much problem getting it off.
Oh, did I tell you it was a lot of sanding? I was lucky I had a very good "automatic" hand sander, called a wife.
Good luck.
I found a 1/8 inch sheet of plywood door skin at a local lumber store that was just the right thickness. The TC was mostly aluminum framed.
The front cap was laminated to a very heavy card board which allowed it to bend. It was fastened to the camper only around the outer perimeter. Removed and laid it out on the shop floor. Scraped and sanded the residue off without damaging the filon. Probably 2 hours of sanding.
The sides were laminated to plywood. What I found was that the delamination was the separation and swelling of the plywood layers. One layer of the plywood was still solidly bonded to the filon, which I suspect will be the same with yours.
I carefully pulled the skin back and removed all the wet plywood. This left about a 1/16 inch layer of the plywood on the filon. It took 3 or 4 days with skin pulled back to allow the remaining plywood to dry.
When dry, I gently sanded the ply of wood still on the filon, cut the 1/8 door skin to fit the shape of the void and glued it in.
When bonded to the wood already on the filon it was very near the same thickness of the original plywood.
In your case you'll need to lay the filon out on a flat surface and gently remove any double ply layers. As long as you don't have any high spots the actual difference in plywood thickness won't matter since you'll be doing the complete slide wall.
I used polyurethane adhesive (gorilla glue) which is what the manufacturer had used originally. It is moisture cured and reacts fairly quickly.
I used 3/4 inch particle board to make "pressure plates" to hold the filon flat while the glue cures which only take a short time. When polyurethane starts to cure it foams up and will separate the materials if you don't compress it. I used 6 tires and wheels laying on top of the 4 x 8 foot sheet of particle board. Not sure how much weight that was but it worked well.
Take it easy and don't get too aggressive with the scraper and sander and you shouldn't have too much problem getting it off.
Oh, did I tell you it was a lot of sanding? I was lucky I had a very good "automatic" hand sander, called a wife.
Good luck.
