NO die cutting, No laser cut fins in 1969. You would cut out the template, trace with pencil on the balsa (follow the correct wood grain!) Then cut them out with a sharp knife.
The matching pieces may not be cut the same so stack them and sand both with a block.
There were 32 balsa pieces in all!
I remember it taking a while to cut them out. I kept track this time -
Cutting out the templates - 20 minutes
Tracing and cutting the balsa pieces - 1 hour, 5 minutes
Stack and sanding - 20 minutes
1 hour, 45 minutes total
When you trace templates with a pencil, you'll probably end up cutting them a little large.I used the card stock templates as a size guide and sanded to balsa to what I thought was the correct size.
I checked the sizes of the pieces against a laser cut O.T. set from BMS. The JimZ's templates printed up bigger than the original kit size.
While I appreciate having the instructions online -
EVERY SCAN SHOULD HAVE A 1" REFERENCE SQUARE!
I had to go back and size the pieces to the BMS laser cut parts.
Ah yes, slabs of balsa and card stock patterns. Brings back fond memories. Remember those Guillows kits? Patterns printed right on the hard as oak slabs of balsa.
ReplyDeleteHi Tim,
DeleteMy Guillow's kits always had the die-crushed balsa. I do remember the Centuri kits with printed balsa sheets.
I think the less expensive series Guillows kits had printed parts. Fun times. Those little cut-outs in the fuse formers were always a pain to get right.
DeleteI've built a few models with die-crunched parts; Carl Goldberg models were always pretty good with the fewest parts needing fixed or re-cut.
One of the problems with printed balsa was that you couldn't substitute in your own wood easily. Hard to rebuild after a crash, too.