Hi, hope you enjoyed part 1:) For part 2 I’m continuing on with the fuselage build, which is adding the wing tongue, engine plate, tail section and all the stringers. It’s been quite a while since building a model of any kind with stringers. I think it maybe be as early as my first ever rubber powered jobs which were KeilKraft ‘Skuka’ and ‘Spitfire’ models. So it was quite a pleasure to just sit and carefully cut the notches in each former and add each stringer. Very relaxing 🙂
Anyways here below are the latest pics. Enjoy.
Yes, at last! Adding the stringers to the bottom shell. I cut and glued in some curved 1/8th balsa pieces at the very front then spliced in straight sections of 1/8th strip for the length of the fuselage.
patching the split in the top shell with 1/32″ soft balsa sheet. Quite messy but it looked ok in the end
patching the split from the inside
here is the 1/8″ ply sheet wing tongue which is to be glued solid into the top fuselage section
card template used to mark the cut out for the wing tongue
you can just see the section of duct to be cut out to take the wing tongue. It will sit flat onto the gap and be glued all round
here is the wing tongue glued in place. Shaping up nicely!
Here’s another angle shot looking from the rear. A flat floor tile off-cut is used to measure accurately the wing tongue position and to ensure it is level
strengthening the wing tongue joint with glued in soft balsa block pieces, which are then carved down to wedge shaped pieces
snug-fitting extra balsa added under the tongue to further strengthen it. pretty strong too 🙂
and here’s the block pieces carved down. With the stringers and extra sheeting to be added it should be bomb-proof!
a sheet of 1/16″ soft balsa and 1/32″ ply bonded together make up the tail piece
here’s the gap being cut and prepared to take the tail piece. more on that in the next post