After sorting out the problems with my building board, I am ready to begin building! As is typical, construction begins with the tail feathers. The dies must have been new and sharp when this kit was punched out, all the parts have very clean crisp edges with no sign of “crushing”.
The die cut lines are so crisp, that it is hard to tell the rib bottom from the building tab, so I flipped over each rib and used it to mark out the rib profile on its mate.
Then I used my angle sander to bevel the edge of each rib to fit tightly against the leading edge.
The rear trailing edge is made up of three pieces. The instructions call for them to be positioned on the plans for marking, then removed and glued together. I was afraid that it would be too hard to keep the assembly aligned and straight doing that, so I started by gluing the center section of the TE to ribs S3 to establish a horizontal datum.
Next, I glued the outer sections with Titebond while aligning to the outer ribs and using my laser to ensure all was straight and true before the glue set. I’ll confess that it took me two tries to get it right.
After that, it was straightforward construction. I did deviate from the plans slightly to add balsa blocks for hinge points.
Here is the stab ready for sheeting.
And finally, I have prepared the sheeting using a few drops of my last precious tube of Ambroid.
Note: I am keeping a log of my build time and will be recoding it with each post.
Total build hours to date: 13.5 (no one ever accused me of being a fast builder)
Hi Al, hope you’ve marked all the components from the die cut sheets. Mine on the Stinson were illegible & not all were marked, only the sheet. So I had to use a magnifying glass to read the manual while identifying the parts from the sheets. Regards Eric.
I tend to mark as I go (and often do not bother to mark at all). It can be a bit of a challenge picking the first few parts out of larger kit like this, but as you start to work your way through the die cut sheets, it starts to get easier.