dutchy50

G`Day
Top Flite 1/7th P-51
Am up to the stage of tack glueing the cowl sides in place (page 42 of the instruction building book), what am I to do about the protruding sides of the fuselage past the firewall? how does one glue the Balsa Cowl Sides 1/2 inch thickness to the fuselage when there is some fuselage protruding past the firewall? 1/8th thickness,am I suppose to sand this flush with the firewall?
dutchy50

Zor

Hello dutchy50,

If I cannot help, at least I am saying Hello 2 U.

Is there a confusion in the drawings? Is it not clearly drawn?

Can you post a picture of this area of the drawings ?

Zor

dutchy50

Zor
This is what I mean!!!!

FallDownGoBoom

My Feedback: (1)

Duchy:

Yep, from this point you glue the cowl sides, top, and corners together, then get out your razor plane and some 80 grit sand paper and create a load of balsa shavings and dust. There's an enormous amount of wood wasted in shaping the cowl. One thing I noticed in your pictures is that it looks like your cowl will be extremely thin where the corners meet the top/sides. Same thing happened on mine, and I had to figure a way to get some pieces of 1/8" balsa inside the cowl to make sure I didn't sand all the way through. Hopefully there's enough room for you to do this with the square motor mount. I think I ended up going to one of the Dave Brown round fiberglass mounts, which left me a little more room to work with.

Bear in mind that the only "weight" the cowl supports is the fiberglass lower cowl. So even if you shape/sand down the 1/2 blocks to 5/16" thick, you'll be OK from a structural point of view. Hope this helps.

Zor

Hello dutchy50,

Ah! a picture (3 in fact lol) is worth a thousand words.

I do not see a problem. I can only tell you what I would do.

I would cement the cowl basa blocks exactly as they appear in the pictures using 30 min epoxy on all the contacting surfaces. The inside surfaces of the cowling will be epoxied anyway to fuel proof them.

I would leave the fuselage sides protruding in front of the firewall to keep the continued fibres. and large cementing area to the cowling blocks.

Then carve the outer surfaces to shape and finish with sanding.
I would glue in (epoxy) trianfular cross section hard balsa corner pieces all around where the firewall meets the fuse sides, tops and bottomson both front and rear faces of the firewall as reinforcement.
Create epoxy fillets on all glued joints to increase the binding areas.

NOTE: I am not telling you what to do. I am telling you what I would do.

Best wishes for a nice model under way.

Zor