Does vacumn forming a fuse skin to glue over a fuse superstructure sound like a promising or really dumb idea?

Anything is possible...

I do know lots of folks vacuum bag giant scale wings in the build process... but this is for foam core wings.... for applying the balsa sheeting....

no idea how it would work around open stuff.....
seems like more work than needed.....

Sounds a little bit like the old Sig "KwikBuilt" stuff. They used a profile frame and ABS body skins. Don't think they were too successful as I never hear of them even on sucker bay.
Walt

I was thinking it's about the same as a FG fuse only cheaper faster and lighter. And I think the plug would last longer. I'm just exploring some ideas but would like the benefitial opinions of the more experienced.

"cheaper faster and lighter"

I'm not convinced about that. It will take considerable time and effort to make the mold; In order to have it strong enough, I believe, from my experience, that it will be heavier than glass.

Les

As for strength, some plastics would very good strength in tension even when quite thin, but they would not be as strong in compression as a traditional balsa/glass skin. That might not be a problem, as the same can be said of film covers such as Monocote, which really is nothing more than a super thin plastic. I would think that even thin PETG would be strong enough, say .020 or .030. But If you go through all the trouble of making a plug, you could make a mold of it and layup a fiberglass body. Another way to go, if there are no compound curves, you could cover it in .01 or .015 G10. Unless you were going to make a lot of the same plane and already have a vaccume former, I don't see that it can be cheaper or easier than traditional balsa/glass.

It seems to me that turning out 20 or 30 fuses a day for plastic to 1 every 2 or 3 days for FG would make it a whole lot cheaper. What's the cost of a MEISTER or YELLOW fuse today. If a satisfactory fuse could be supplied at 1/2 or 1/3 of that cost, do yo think there would be a market fo them?

Some of the old Top Flite kits used preformed balsa sheeting to make sheeting the fuse easier. I have an old Bearcat and Corsair kit, both had these.

"Some of the old Top Flite kits used preformed balsa sheeting to make sheeting the fuse easier"

My rememberance is that those were flat sheets cut to the proper shape, that you had to wrap around the formers. I think we are talking about preforming the proper "dish", that would just set around the formers.

Les