Back to Basics

Painting over the scorch wasn't really practical. Fortunately I've kept all the leftover bits of balsa sheet that held the laser cut parts. Slicing off a short length from the end of the sheet that had held one part of the fuselage side gave a piece of balsa which had approximately the same grain pattern as the area around the dovetail joint. I made a shallow cut either side of the joint and chiselled out a recess approximately 1/32" deep. Glued in the piece and left it weighted down for a few hours. Now its sanded down, the joint isn't quite perfect, but I think that after a couple of coats of sanding sealer and a final rub down before covering, I think that'll look a lot better than a burnt line showing a dovetail. There's a faint line showing either side of the patch, and I think the patch shows up as I found that the grain runs in the opposite direction to the grain of the fuselage side.

The top decking is 1/2" balsa sheet, this is on order at Balsa Cabin. This morning I realised that the bottom decking is 3/16" balsa sheet, haven't got any that's suitable, only really hard stuff for a different model. The section of the underside of the fuselage is a fairly gentle curve. Not having suitable light sheet to hand I cut a couple of 5/16" X 3/32" wide strips from the scrap left from the wing rib sheets. These strips are glued to the lower edge of the fuselage sides, and set in by about 1/16". I have some suitable 1/8" sheet, this will be cut and fitted on to the strips. This gets the bottom of the fuselage longitudinal shape correct, and leaves a much lighter piece of balsa to carve and sand to section.

The lower rear fuselage sheet has been planed down and sanded with the Permagrit coarse sanding block. The packing strips worked alright as there was no sanding through the sheet at all.
The joints between the packing strip, fuselage sides and bottom sheeting give a good indication of the progress of the shaping, easy to keep the same appearance of the joints from side to side.

That finish looks nice Brian.

The top deck has been cut to length and marked out ready for cutting. Can't do that until the rain stops and I can get the bandsaw outside. Before shaping I'll cut the sheet at the forward end to form a hatch to enable access to the fuel tank. Tail unit awaits final sanding/sealing and self locates on the fuselage.

The plan calls for 1/2" square hardwood for the main U/C mounting in the wing, I have 3/4" X 1/2", so once again I'll have to wait for the rain to stop, or modify the wing ribs to take the larger size mounting. 3/4" wide certainly makes it easier to fit the saddle clamps, think I'll modify the wing ribs to suit.

Yesterday, while waiting for the Postman (person), and suitably fuelled up with three Weetabix, I attempted to bend a three turn spring nose leg. I got it almost right on the second try. Unfortunately the first turn of the wire isn't a good radius, more oval than round. Found out the hard way how to get the spring coils to sit side by side, but the first turn is a problem. I've run out of Weetabix now, so wire bending will be on hold today.

Fortunately the rain stopped long enough for me to get the bandsaw out and cut the top deck sheet to the plan profile. Where the deck meets the tail plane, its cut away to go over the top surface, took a bit of fiddling to get the fit between the two surfaces. The tail plane can't be fitted to the fuselage with the top decking in place, that was a snag I hadn't anticipated, the second but only slight snag was that with the bottom decking fitted, the fuselage sides are no longer vertical between the former at the wing TE and the fin post. I clamped the fuselage sides vertical and glued in a spacer to hold things together until the deck is glued on. I'll tack glue the deck for the shaping, remove it and re-fit the tail plane, then finally glue the top deck in position. The tail plane is firmly pinned in position and has been squared up using a pin stuck into the C/L of the top of front former and measuring from the pin to the TE at the tip of the tail plane. After pinning, the two dimensions were within 1/32", I guess that makes it about right. The plan leaves a fair bit to the imagination, a sketch of what things look like around the area where the fin and dorsal fairing meet the top deck, and blend into the tail plane, would have been handy.