Sorry I have been absent from this tutorial. I found out that my pop has cancer - from smoking - been dealing with that.

Moving on to the tutorial...

I spend a good bit of time looking at the alignment of the two halves and at the plug itself to make sure that it meets my expectations. I notice obvious departures from my reference model and need to decide if I can live with the variations. Remember what I said about my expectations of model building at the beginning of this manual – I like my projects to look like what they are supposed to look like but I don’t expect them to be completely scale. Keeping that concept in mind, I can easily identify this as a Huey UH-1 so I am good with what I have in this plug.

Preparing the plug is the next stage of this build. I begin by mounting the two halves of the plug to a piece of inch thick MDF board. I attach the plugs by using screws from the back side of the MDF. Some people glue or epoxy their plugs to the parting plane. I prefer to use screws because I can remove the plug from the MDF after the mold is finished with out destroying it.

Once I have the plugs securely attached to the parting plane, I need to go around the base of the plugs looking for gaps between the board and the plugs. Any gaps are filled with clay. This is just a matter of forcing the clay into the gaps in order to prevent resin from getting under the plug. When the gaps are filled and all excess clay is removed, I can apply mold release wax to the plugs and the MDF parting plane. I like both McGuire’s and Part-All mold release waxes. It is important to apply at least five coats to the plugs in order to ensure adequate coverage. The plugs should be polished to a shiny smooth finish.