I have been asked so often over the years about how I make models out of fiberglass. Since there seems to be such great interest, I have decided to start this thread to show the process. Please comment and make suggestions. Although I have been working with fiberglass and building models for over 30 years, there is always new stuff to learn. With that, here I go.

I have made many things out of fiberglass over the years. Typically, my projects involve building a plug, making a mold from that plug and finally using that mold to make pieces.

One project that I have wanted to do for a while was inspired by a ceiling fan that I first saw years ago. I am sure that you have seen the fans that look like the nose of a WW II fighter plane. From the moment that I saw that fan, I thought that it would be cool to have a helicopter body that would hang from the underside of the ceiling fan making the fan blades look like rotor blades. Of course the helicopter would have to be a classic – I chose the UH-1 from the Vietnam era.

Thus the project begins. The first thing I like to do when I am building something like this is to go to the hobby store and pick up a model of the helicopter that I want to build. I use this model as a three dimensional reference. While 3D references are not always available, I do like to use them when possible. For this project, I selected a 1/35 scale UH-1. Using this model, I can get a good idea of the size that the fuselage has to be relative to the diameter of the fan blades in order to maintain a scale appearance.

I began to build the fuselage of the model and began to analyze the proportions, angles and curves of the copter. See the photo of the fuselage below.


>>>>>>>>>>>>&g t;>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>&g t;>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>

At this point, I can begin to produce profile drawings of the copter. I definitely need to start with a view from the top and a view from the side.
Some of this is accomplished through artistic ability and some of it is cheating. The model that I bought had these views in the painting instructions. Based on the diameter of the fan blades, I figured that the fuselage should be about 40 inches from nose to tail. I simply used my copier to blow these views up to the size that I need. Then I drew in some details that were lost in the enlarging process. See the photos below.


The next step for me was to trace these profiles onto a base that I can use to build a plug. I like to use 1/8 inch mahogany door skin for this. I like mahogany because I can buy it at home depot for cheap and one sheet is more than enough material for a project like this. In the photos below you can see the cut outs that I did in the door skin.


You can see that they warp a little. This warping is no big deal since I will easily straighten the pieces out during assembly of the frame. Next, I want to decide along which line to epoxy the primary horizontal shape to the vertical shape. Having access to my plastic model makes this decision easy. In the photos below you can see how I glue two pieces like these. Angle aluminum stock is easy to clamp the pieces to and assures reasonable alignment of the parts.

In addition to angle aluminum making alignment of not so straight pieces easier, it also gives a pretty good 90 degree alignment of one piece to the other.

At this point I need to make a statement concerning scale. I am no artist, I know from the outset of a project like this that when I am done, anyone who knows anything about helicopters is going to look at this and say “Hey, that’s a Huey UH-1”. That is good enough for me. You can put as much talent and time as you wish into a project. This is your prerogative. I like to get a project’s detail to the point where I am satisfied. I think that I am usually satisfied with my projects bearing a close resemblance to the vision that I started with. That being said, nothing that I ever build will ever be completely scale (unless I happen to trip over a bucket of talent and patience). That is all I have to say about that.