Evening All,
Thank you Frank, Richie, Alexis, Dave, Ian, Rick Willem and Marc for your very kind comments which are very much appreciated.
Alexis I knew about the hot water method for restoring the wing but I think that the reason why it had warped was because I had sanded it too rigorously to get an aerofoil shape, so when I added the ribs that caused the distortion. I had not sanded the lower wing as roughly so it did not distort by very much and has been salvaged. Making a new wing seemed to be the quickest and easiest solution
Construction has restarted and I have now made the nacelle ready to be fixed to the lower wing. I have thought long and hard about the order of assembly of the major components and have decided to follow the sequence described here. More will follow later.
The first step was to put the radiators on to the sides of the nacelle. I had pre-drilled holes in the nacelle and radiators to take small pins to provide a strong joint, so a drop of cement and they were on. This was followed by the pipes to the top of the engine which were made from 20 thou rod which had been bent to shape and then painted:
The cabane struts were cemented to the fuselage sides and allowed to set properly. The length of these is the same but the front end of the nacelle is supposed to be slightly lower when mounted to the wing - getting the lengths right was a bit of a fiddle. Having got the cabanes in place there were awkward cross struts to add between the lower parts of the cabanes - I used 10 x 20 thou strip for those. The return pipes from the bottom of the radiators to the engine had to be added to the bottom of the nacelle after the struts were in place as the pipes ran outside of the struts:
The serlal was now fixed in place - it was from Arctic Decals and made to order. It is slightly oversize (my fault, not Arctic Decals!), but I do not think anyone will notice if I do not mention it. I also added the exhaust pipes but some of these are too long and I will have to remove and trim them later before I fix the top wing i place.
Now to mount the booms and tail. This is what I have been thinking about for some time. I have decided that the method I am about to describe is as good as any, but it varies somewhat form the method that I have used before. The rear of the booms were fixed to the rudder posts and the horizontal tail section sat on a cross member between the lower booms. The rudder posts passed through the horizontal tail surface, so I soldered two small rudder posts to the ends of the lower booms. I drilled two holes in the horizontal tail surface and squared these with the end of a small file and made sure that the posts would pass through properly.
The lower booms were epoxied to the slots in the rear of the lower wing and the correct angle achieved by using a standard boom jig - the height had been measured from the plans as described in previous build articles:
The above shows the booms set ready to be epoxied, the paint pot was to help keep the rudder posts upright while I fiddled and checked that everything was square and true. After the expoxy had been applied and cured I had this:
In the images there is a piece of paper with a line and arrow with 19mm written on it: the line represents the height of the booms at the tail end relative to the rear of the wing - the edge of the paper was used to measure the height of the wood blocks that make the jig. The wing and booms were laid over plans to get accurate alignments. Simple and effective - scratch building does not have to be complicated or difficult. A simple check of the newly installed booms with the horizontal tail surface showed that the rudder posts would pass through the holes in the tail, so the horizontal bar between the rear of the booms was inserted. This was a piece of 20 x 30 thou strip:
The nacelle sub-assembly was cemented to the lower wing and the boom bracing at the rear painted. Finally the horizontal tail surface was CA'd to the rudder posts and booms:
I have worked out how I intend to fix the upper booms to the top wing and then wing to the above asembly and will describe the process in the next update when I have completed that stage.
Thanks for looking.
Stephen.