The upper and lower tapers are sanded first concentrating on just the edge.
The blackened edge gives more contrast making it easier to sand the knife edge evenly.
So far I've only sanded a taper about 3/16" off the leading and trailing edges.
Now sand towards the penciled center line. Don't thin the black edge! You'll be constantly checking its thickness. Keep the width consistent from top to bottom.
You'll end up sanding off some of the pencil line and the outside edge will be thinner than the root edge. This is typical of many real rockets and missiles.
I've drawn the pencil line down to show how the sanding removes the wood.
The other side is sanded.
The center line will end up back in the middle and should straighten out. It might take fine sanding under a strong light source to clean up the line.
The center line wedge shape is easy to see near the outside edge, not as sharp as the root edge.
On the left is the diamond shaped root edge, the inset shows the small outside edge.
The ink down the leading and trailing edges is removed with a few light passes of 400 grit.
Each fin takes about an hour to get right.
Anyone can get this result with practice. You've just got to go slow -
Sand a little, check the ink line width, sand a little, check the ink line width.
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