The straight cuts were made with my break off blade knife.
Save your curved lines for an X-Acto style #11 blade.
That rear curved cut can be sanded by wrapping some 400 grit around an engine casing.
The Estes instructions suggest rounding the trailing edges of the wing. Pay attention to the single rounded leading edge of the engine rib.
Just a thought -- would rounding trailing edge on the rear of the wings near the base of the wing cause a minor fit problem with the engine shroud pieces at the back (i.e. very small gap on the trailing edge if the shroud piece is flush at the trailing edge) ?
ReplyDeleteI'm mentioning this as I did run into similar issue on a scratchbuild that had similar feature (nacelle shroud that joined wing and was positioned flush with the trailing edge) and the small gap at the join bugged me when the model was complete.
Hi Naoto,
DeleteTrue! You'd think the kit designers would have taken this into account. I used a shroud pattern provided on a forum from John Boren of Estes. The original engine shroud pattern overhangs the rounded leading and trailing edges. Rounded edges are suggested in the Estes instructions.
I trimmed the shroud to place the front and rear back from the rounded wing edges.
I'm guessing that:
Delete* was originally designed with square edges, and rounding of edges in the instructions wasn't taken into account.
* rounding of edges was intended -- but not as half-round shape (or sharper) but more like rounding off the sharp corners. In that case the gaps would've been so noticeable. You could also "massage" the cardstock part while the glue is still wet to make for closer fit, or perhaps the gap might be small enough to fill with a bit of glue.
* being a skill level 2 kit, perhaps it was assumed that the builder would be comfortable to make necessary adjustments (not mentioned explicitly in instructions) for a better fit.
There's probably a reason why in the instructions for the Orbital Transport, it calls for rounding the edges *after* the wing assemblies are completed (with the exception being the center vane in the nacelle intake -- sanding it after assembly would not be easy).