Leading edge ply questions

[914pete]

So I'm preparing to epoxy the leading edge ply on my wings. Do I mask all the spar, nose rib, and ply contact points including 1/4" strips of masking tape on the underside of the ply where it will contact the ribs before varnishing? I've seen a few posts where builders are soaking the ply first with water before attaching it. Is the T-88 effective if the wood is wet? And if the underside of the ply is varnished prior to gluing it down, how does soaking it help? Wouldn't it be water proof? As usual, I'm sure I'm over thinking this.

[Kamcoman77]

If you soak it to form it, do this first, then let it dry in the form. Mask all contact points where T-88 will go. Varnish the interior surface. Here is one builder's way of handling the nose ply:

[DA Miller]

what I've read on the forum is that the T-88 will actually glue successfully with wet ply. I'd think moist.  Not soaking wet, but I've not personally done it.

[Larry H]

What I did to apply my leading edge plywood. I stood my wing up vertically on the floor trailing edge down, no problem the wing is quite stiff and strong at this point. I leaned my wing against my table then I trial fitted my plywood covering, made pencil marks on my plywood pieces at the leading edge  stringer/plywood junction on both ends of each piece of plywood then drew a line on the outside end to end of each piece of nose covering pieces of plywood using those reference marks. I later used these lines to staple the plywood nose to these stringers. I then laid my plywood on the table, using a 1” cheap paint brush I painted 100% of the inside surface of the plywood with West System epoxy. I used the epoxy to seal the raw plywood and the additional epoxy I applied to each nose rib glued the plywood to the nose stringer and ribs. I first quickly stapled down the nose stringer then each rib quite quickly. I developed a technique of putting my stapler down at a slight angle which shot one side of the staple fully into the wood and the other side sticking up which allowed a place to grab the staples with needle nose or whatever tool you like that will grab them. This way I didn’t damage my plywood trying to dig up the staples to be able to grab them. This system worked quite well for my whole wing and making the ribs. This method of applying the plywood and stapling is quite fast and accurate. To be clear, I painted the epoxy on the inside surface of the plywood, leading edge stringer one plywood section at a time and applied epoxy to one side of the nose ribs toward me. While all the epoxy on plywood and wing stringer and ribs was still wet I stapled the plywood down. I then moved myself to the other side of the wing and quickly applied epoxy to the second side of the nose ribs and stapled it down. What I did on my aileron ribs was cut out rib shaped 1/4” plywood additional ribs then cut them about 1/4” wide to eliminate the extra rib weight. I epoxied onto the ribs where two pieces of plywood butted up against one another same as the leading edge of the main wing pieces butt together. It is really quite fast to do this. It just widens the glue down area of those ends meeting at that point