Wonderful Dean,
Always loved a Panther jet. Such great lines and looks so good in the air. Looks like it is going to be pretty good size. What are you using for power in it?
Had a modeler in the California club who had a big one with a turbine in it. He is sort of the joke in the club. A good modeler, but every time he comes out to fly, we fellow modelers would be taking odds on how many things would fall off his aircraft during his flights.
I do not know what happened during one of his Panther flights. I do know you have to watch the stall characteristics of this straight wing jet.(I've had two P-80's and they were both that way). Anyway, it went down in one of the biggest explosions anyone has ever seen at the field. Nothing survived. Just one of the reasons I do not like turbine powered aircraft.
Are you going to use this as a plug and make a glass fuselage? I will walk you through that procedure if you haven't done it before. Weigh your fuselage when you have it finished and think of the benefit of having this same fuselage at least half of it's weight, stronger and hollow.
The properties of Isophthalic resin and epoxy are day and night. Iso is a bonding resin and when cured it is still tacky and can not be sanded. This is how you are able to to lay up more than one layer of cloth and have them bond with each other. And also why you are able lay up a glass fuselage on a plug. When you are finished laying up a fuselage, be it in a mold or on a plug, you have to apply a coat of "PVA" over the glass to make it totally cure so it can be sanded. The "PVA" is a liquid wax and seals the resin form the air. Now you sit back and let it cure for about three days before trying to sand on it. Ya don't want to wait much longer than that. Because this Iso resin will continue to cure for weeks and continue to get harder and harder.
"MEKP" is a liquid catalyst that is used with ISO resin and according to the temperature you are work in, you add drops of it to the resin. As for mixing small amounts of Iso and getting it to work in these small amounts would be interesting at best.
That is not what this resin was designed for. I think trying to apply this thin of cloth and applying Iso resin this thin would be very difficult at best, if it even came out right at all.
I like this 15 minute epoxy for this job. I know how long it takes the epoxy to cure. I fell doing this job in small areas at a time works best for me. It allows me to get the cloth on as smooth as I can. Now it says it is completely cured in 3 hours, but I have found that it sands better if I wait overnight to sand on it.
The nice thing about modeling is that all modelers have their own way of building. And I think they all work. It is just how one does it.
I personally used thin CA throughout my planking job on this F-14. I use this small tubing you can get for your CA bottles. I first glue the plank to the formers and then run a line of CA down the plank and wipe it with a paper towel to remove any extra CA. I also do a section at a time and then apply another line of Ca to the inside of my planking. I have found that when sanding, I sometimes sand through the outside CA and part of the plank will suddenly need to be glued again. This inside CAing I am quite liberal with because it also strengthens the balsa.
I personally have not had difficulty with the glue joints on the planking. I do understand what you are talking about when you mention flatting the planks between the glue joints. I think it is probably just my sanding style. Or it may be the narrow planks that I make. I do almost all of my sanding across the planks instead of the length of them. I also use these aluminum sanding blocks I have mentioned before. And I do sand my planking all the way through any CA on the outside of the planks.
I think your method probably works as well or better than mine. It is just how us modelers do things differently to wind up at the same place.
P. S. I love your post. Asking questions of each other and sharing our modeling projects is what this is all about. Please keep me informed about your Panther.