It looks similar to the epoxy method, but I re-did both a piper wing walk and a set of floats for a floatplane with this product from Aircraft Spruce (except the sand is already mixed in). I can’t say it was any better or worse than other products. I moved from Canada a year after, so can’t comment on the longevity beyond that (for which it was fine).
From a technical standpoint, perhaps epoxy is a stronger matrix material, but I wouldn’t know for sure without any real data.
Unfortunately, the wing walk material which has arrived from Spruce Germany is of no use. It has a very stiff backing sheet, made of some kind of plastic. It cannot be used over any protruding rivets.
On the TB20, one has to use either the sand + epoxy method described by Pytlak above, or get something like Socata originally used which uses a much softer aluminium foil backing.
If anyone is interested in buying the stuff I have, I am all ears It looks really robust and wasn’t cheap.
It turns out 1300L is almost impossible to get here in Europe. One can get the 1300L TF which is toluene-free.
One tends to naturally assume that anything which is less toxic is not as good… usually that is the case. OTOH toluene may be just the solvent used.
Just got this regarding the AF178 glue:
-30C is the lowest temperature it can withstand but only for short periods of 1hour. It will be able to withstand -10 C for months on end.
This is OK for the firewall foam whose firewall side is very unlikely to see -30C but it would not be any good for sticking on the wing walk material.
An update, in case anybody else is doing this: after much running around, I found that Spruce recommend Scotch Weld 1300L adhesive. This is “hazmat” and hard to get, with “aviation supply” firms like Silmid charging a fortune and with a silly min order quantity (no doubt you get an EASA-1 ). But I found some here.
The TB20 wing walk surface is 43″ × 23″ so the 24" wide stuff is just wide enough.
Many thanks Wigglyamp – that’s a good find. It is astonishingly cheap which sadly makes me a bit suspicious. I have a feeling I have seen this stuff before; it has a surface like a fairly fine sandpaper.
The Socata stuff I have is really heavy duty and seems to be in the form of a (possibly self adhesive) aluminium backed sheet. It is pliable so can be formed over rivet heads etc. I looks similar to this stuff (posted already above) but the latter needs an adhesive. The best stuff may be Scotch-Weld 1357 which is toxic enough to be really good but seems unavailable in the UK except from Silmid at an outrageous price, especially with the MOQ of four tins. So I am ordering the AF 178 vinyl contact adhesive which I used on the firewall foam a year ago (also very toxic but that’s OK).
I decided to not use Pytlak’s method because I am not confident I can get it even enough, with hand-brushed epoxy resin and sand sprinkled on it.
The main reason I want to change the wing walk is that it is bubbling up in a few places and there may be corrosion underneath, which would be bad news. The earlier you catch it, the better.
Here’s another version up to 24" wide
That’s an interesting “non slip rubber” material, but the supplied width is too narrow.