I just read the FAA's new report on composite repair failures

It said over 40% of issues come from bad surface prep, not the actual patch work. I found it buried in their latest safety bulletin. Anyone else seeing this show up in their hangar?

4 comments

4 Comments

mianelson26d ago

Wow, that really hits home. It's the same with painting or even fixing things around the house. The finish fails because I rushed the sanding or cleaning, not because the paint was bad. That prep work is boring but it's everything.

anna49126d ago

Ugh, right? Why is the boring part always the most important. I tried to bake a cake last week and skipped letting the butter get to room temp. Total disaster, it was like a brick. Same thing when I glued a chair leg, didn't clean the dust off first and it just popped right back off.

the_drew26d ago

Right, @mianelson nailed it with the prep work thing.

dixon.james2d ago

My kitchen remodel last year proved the opposite. We skipped priming the drywall to save time, and the paint has held up perfectly for twelve months. Sometimes you just get lucky and the prep work truly doesn't matter.