Repairing a small tear in the tissue paper on a balsa airplane

Small tears happen for a variety of reasons. In this post, we'll cover tension tears. A tension tears when the paper dries an pulls so tight that the paper tears. Tension tears are mostly easy to fix. The basic process is a lot like putting a small piece of toilet paper on the face (to help clot the bleeding) after cutting it shaving.

By hand, not with scissors, tear out a piece of tissue paper about 2x the size of the hole. Don't worry about getting the paper perfectly round or etc. The idea is that the paper edge will not be visible. If the tissue paper needs to be bigger than 1/2 inch square, then you should use the technique for large holes (we'll cover that later). Tearing the paper is very important because it will leave a nice mat of paper tissue fibers that will glue ever so perfectly to the old paper without leaving an edge. If you cut the paper with scissors, then the edge will be visible.

Get the new piece of paper wet and stick it on the hole (just like shaving!) Dab a little glue (I use Elmer's Gel school glue) on the patch and then, with a wet brush, gently spread the glue around. Getting the patch and the surrounding paper wet will look pretty bad. Don't worry, it will look good when it dries.