Hey howzit going? Welcome to part 2 of the Saab J29 build. It’s nearly finished! All the structure is complete and just a few small things to do, such as elastic mount for the tail surfaces, small magnets for wing fixing, little bit of gap filling here and there and molding an acetate canopy.
Here are the latest pics 🙂
Here’s the tail fixing which uses elastic bands and a scrap piece of carbon tube to hook the elastic. It looks simple but was quite tricky to resolve.
Canopy Time! Here are my three attempts at molding the canopy. The one still attached to the scrap board was the successful one-finally!
Cockpit detail Really enjoyed doing this. I wasn’t even going to bother, but before I knew it, I was carving soft balsa block, gluing paper and spray painting. Just painting the pilot and gluing things down left to do before adding the canopy.
Like the Boulton Paul, I’ve covered the model first with Mylar then lightweight tissue applied wet then smoothed down with the hands, followed by sticking the edges down with Pritt Stik. I absolutely was not going to do the same with the fuselage but then changed my mind. Wasn’t too bad in the end to do 🙂
Nice tight Mylar! Super easy to do. Just cut to size, about 1/2″ bigger than the outline, ‘Pritt Stick’ the edges of the wing then stretch across, press the edges and iron down to stick the film to the balsa, followed by gently gliding the iron face across the Mylar to shrink it. (I used a travel iron) 🙂
Lightweight tissue being cut to size
tissue wetted with cold water then stretched across the wing
Covering smoothed down with the hand. The result is really good. The edges are then trimmed and stuck with the Pritt Stick on the other side
fuselage covered with Mylar then heat shrunk. Once I cut the strips in widths to cover 3 or 4 stringers, it wasn’t too tricky to put on.
Check out part 2 for the paint job! 🙂