Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Estes Great Goblin, #9724 Build, Part 6, Gluing Up The Fins

I'm building three kits so I tried to keep track of the two piece fins. With four different sheets of laser cut balsa (per kit) sometimes there is a slight difference in density or thickness. 

The single dot on the left side designates Kit #1, the dots on the right will match up fin pieces 1 through 4.






You'll have some useable extra balsa left.
Hang on to it for some scratch build designs.







The edges of parts F and G were glued together and placed under a clear Plexiglass cutting board. 

More weight was set on top after I made sure the root edges on the TTW tabs were lined up. You can sand and match up the outside edges later with a sanding block.

5 comments:

  1. LOL, I do the "Sharpie dots on the root edge" also.

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    1. Hi Neil,
      Good to know I'm not the only one!
      A few years back I was gluing together some two piece fins and didn't realize the balsa halves were from two slightly different thickness sheets. It required way too much filling to even them out.

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  2. I don't know anyone who likes these two-piece fin assemblies. I usually paper these for added strength if I can't find a 3-party that offers a single-piece basswood fin.

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    Replies
    1. Hi Anonymous,
      I'm going into detail on the fins showing how to eliminate that glue line. The two piece construction doesn't bother me. I'd probably want to paper them if it was something I was keeping for myself.

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