mgnostic

Today pretty much wrapped up the stringers. Since there isn't much of an underlying structure they are technically longerons and are structural. If the formers had been split vertically and the first half of the fuselage assembled flat on the board it would be a lot like a Guillow's rubber model. According to the manual the material for the stringers is 1/8 by 1/4 inch "Japanese Cyprus". It's pretty wood, strong and very stiff. It's also relatively heavy and doesn't particularly like to take a compound curve. I ended up replacing about 16 of the stringers with hard balsa which was much easier to work with and lighter to boot. Where the stringers had a milder curve I kept the cyprus with a mind to using it to link one end of the model with the other. The aftmost former F-9 presented a challenge. I tried making a new one out of 1/8 inch balsa but it has so many notches that it ended up being pretty fragile. I guess I could have cut a new, more accurate F-9 out of aircraft ply but I went with trimming and adjusting the notches on the original part. There are two die cut pieces (F-12) that run down each side of the model locating all of the formers. The ends of these pieces locate the F-9. I cut all of the stingers that attached to F-9 a little long to help with locating the former. The F-12 side pieces have contributed the most with the difficulties due to the notches for the formers being inaccurately cut. Additionally the last four inches of one of the F-12's had a bit of a curve. I addressed this by turning the fuselage upside down so that the parts of the F-12's, which will eventually support the stabilizer saddle, could sit flat on a 2 by 6. With them jigged in place I could glue the F-9 former to the F-12 side pieces and then working side by side the stingers were glued into their notches. The first notch glued was the keel and then working with matching sides I pinched the stringers together and glued them to F9. I also added a piece of 1/8 x 1/4 balsa acrosst he face of F-9 to provide a little extra gluing area. Once the glue set up I was able to trim the ends of the stringers. At this point the fuselage is really taking on a recognizable shape.