Ever since sanding it to shape, much earlier in the build, Eric was worried about the rigidity of the balsa block glued to the top of the vertical fin. He wanted to do something to reinforce it, in case the plane flipped over after landing. (A common experience when our race planes come in “hot” and run off into the grass section on a relatively short runway.) I suggested that we could use bamboo skewers to create a dowel-joint. After talking about it for so long, it only took me a couple months to remember to buy skewers at the grocery store, but I finally did just that. Wouldn’t you know it, Tim did the same, and showed up with bamboo skewers on this build day, as well.
I hold the skewers against my fin assembly to check how to best align them.