RE: Blue Angel - Build
Now that I have the wood from Dynamic Balsa, I moved ahead with the fuselage construction by transferring the shape of the fuselage side doublers on to 1/8” light plywood and cutting them out with my Dremel Moto-Shop jig saw.
As discussed before the fuselage has very complex shapes and I decided that the only way to assemble it would be some sort of fuselage jig to hold it in alignment. I used an old building board (plastic covered shelving) that I was about to throwaway as the jig base. I drew a center line down the board using a straight edge and a lead pencil. I then transferred the former positions from the plans along the center line. Using a square I projected the lines so they were about 4” out from either side of the center line making sure they were precisely square with the center line. I picked up some 3/4” X 1 1/2” smooth cut wood at the hardware store and then cut it into three 8” long pieces. Vertical center lines were scribed on the blocks. I cut three ¼” X ½” X 4” plywood pieces for clamps and drilled the ends for wood screws so they could be screwed to the 3/4” X 1 1/2” blocks to make the clamp. They are set down a little from the top of the 3/4” X 1 1/2” for clearance with the fuselage sides. The next task was to epoxy the 3/4” X 1 1/2”s to the base after checking that the vertical surface was absolutely square with the base. The 3/4” X 1 1/2”s were glued down to the base and lined up with the center line and the former lines. The firewall 3/4” X 1 1/2” block was glued down with a 1 degree right thrust (the aircrafts right not the jig) as defined on the plans.
So far the jig looks like it might work out pretty well. To test the alignment you can view the former alignment marks through the fuel tank hole in the firewall and see all the way back to the former behind the wing and on to the very back of the tail when the balsa sides are ready to be pulled together in the tail.
Some images of the jig while I was testing the aliment using the fuselage side doublers. I’ll glue the balsa fuselage sides to the doublers before gluing the assembly together.
To be continued…