may be interested in following along w/ my PBY build also if I get a good enough respoance here I'll post as much as I do on my other 6 threads.

Well after a long debate w/ myself I thought I would start yet another build, there's not much in the way of balsa building to be done on my other two and it's been far to long since anything has been pinned to my cork building board.

So here we go again this will be the PBY-5 notice there's no A in that there will NOT be any landing gear, this will be the flying boat version but it will be a WARBIRD these planes had so many rolls during WW2 and were used by the USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Russia and the Australians to name a few.

The PBY was in production in SEPTEMBER 1936 - MAY 1945 and some are still flying in service for fire fighting.

It had three 30 cals and two 50 cals and could carry 4,000 lbs of bombs, depth charges or torpedoes and had a range of over 2,500 miles.

I will again most likely do a night fighter version ( THE BLACK CAT)
but I haven't made up my mind yet and haven't picked a squad.

All of my parts will be hand cut and put together w/ hand tools cordless drills, dremal,bench grinder, band saw, hand held belt sander will be the only power tools just like all of my builds to date.

I will also be doing some changes to the design but not very many I'll add some carbon fiber tubing through the wings and some heavier ply in the fuse, the fuse will be fiber glassed and the wings covered w/ fabric maybe solartex but I may go old school w/ silk & dope?

I would like to thank my friend Steve for scanning and enlarging the plans for me
The plane will have an 8' WS & 5' FUSE

Here are the plans hanging up in my building room.
This is the site you can get some Vintage plans from.

http://www.vintagercplans.com/order.htm

Well now I have to just start making my parts.

So once I had the ply I had to figure out the best way to lay my templates out to give the best yield and then spray them w/ LOCTITE spray adhesive, this something new I trying they make two kinds this one for general performance normely I use 3M SPRAY 77 but this was $5 and the 77 was $10 I'll take have price any day.
then I cut out the rest of my parts and broke for dinner and to post, I'm going to get back to it this evening and try to dry fit all of the formers and get a good look at what I have going on. check the progress photos.

Alright about the build that AFT section that I was talking about needing to stay in a straight line I fixed it, the tail section of this plane lifts a great deal to keep the fins out of the water.
so I changed my jiging and lifted the tail higher so the belly is now very curved and the top is in a straight line, now I'm working on lining all of the formers up again over the plans.
If you go to build this plane w/ these plans be aware you can put a TWIST in the FUSE very easy I will check everything many times be for any glue is applied.
Here's a shot of my changes so far.

The next step is to make a template that creates the tayperd point on the aft end of
the HULL I will make it out of heavy art paper until I have what I want.

I will just warn you guys in advance that I will not be doing the normal PLANKING
w/ a thousand strips of balsa and 5 bottles of glueway to much time and mess for me. I will do this skin just like both of my last builds if you haven't seen them look here
Pg 5 report 67.
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showt...1457284&page=5
and you'll understand how I will pull this off. And after it's skinned I will glass it w/ 3M resin & 2oz cloth on the bottom and part of the sides, for those of you that won't think it will be strong enough.

Check the progress photos I'm moving on to phase two of the build.

Bruce

Well this morning I started on the sides of the plane/ boat the plans call for 3/8" thick balsa for the forward area above the waterline running about mid way back, my plane is different because there's no wheel.

This part I'll have to make up as I go but It needs to continue back to former F8
the thing of it is this piece needs to have a compound curve in it, curving toward the nose tip and toward the aft section rounding to follow the formers curves.

First I didn't have any 3/8" balsa but I had some 1/2" that would have been to much to sand so I set up a rip fence on my band saw. I had a folower ask about cutting and getting clean cuts and I told him to go slow and let the saw cut the wood, Well when ripping through something thick 2 1/2" in this case you REALLY HAVE TO GO SLOW and hold the board sq. on it's edge w/ a fence and leave extra so you can sand it smooth and finish it to size w/ 80 grit sand paper.
Once I had my thickness I cut out the shape.

So here's how I took care of that you have to CURFF almost all the way through the
3/8" thickness and at former F3 you have to change the direction of the curffs.
The other thing I did was set up my back saw so I couldn't cut all the way through the
3/8" balsa piece by mistake, the photos will show this better than I will explane.

So I glued w/ CA glue a sq. 1/4" x 1/2" balsa strip to the blade of the saw once I had
cut to the proper depth this way all cuts will be the same.
Then I lay out lines w/ 1/4" spacing and cut them all.

There's a little bit of difference on the sides because I'm not making the wheel bays, but there's so many layers of balsa w the way Robert has design this plane.

Near as I can tell you apply all of the balsa sheets and (GRIND) rough sand the
out of the bugger, but i'm looking at how all of the sheets come together
on one side as a learning process.

So I've popped on the top of FORMERS F5 & F8 in just to see how they'll work out w/ the skinning, this is just like a scratch build witch I like a lot of challenges.

So to bring you up to date I added in the sides where the wheel bays would have been, here instead of KERFFING the 3/8" thick balsa I'll lay up four sheets of 3/32"
glued w/ white gorilla glue.

So check the progress photos I have one layer on one side and three on the other
I stopped at this point because it looks like the last layer covers from above at the wing joiner all the way down to the water line.

This is what I'm checking now trying to get all of these layers clear in my mind, I know there's a bunch of sanding and carving on this plane.

I will be eliminating some of the heavy carved balsa chunks
where possible w/ fiber glass parts made from the lost foam method.

Here's where I'm at so far,

Bruce