Okay, drew up a small drawing to show how I finally used a Right Angle Triangle to make the nosecone top skin (and bottom skin for that matter).
Problem: How to correctly size the top skin to bend around the Side Fuselage Shape in 2D, and place the bends at the correct location.
Up till now I've been able to do this on most models so far as I just kept a straight side profile shape for the fuselage, leading up to the firewall for the rubber band mount.
For the Bomber models I've decided to make, this would look really weird, so decided one way or the other I would figure out how to do the bends and part fit, without printing several test pieces and then adjust until the parts fit. Not the most accurate part fit doing it this way.
I like accurate part fit, that is why I draw my models out to six decimal places: 0.000000 using AutoCAD (possible to go all the way to sixteen decimal places with AutoCAD).
Here is an example of the P38 Nacelle before I corrected an issue with it. This was an easy fix, just narrowed the bottom skin where it bends to the balsa mount/firewall for the prop bearing location. This photo is before building the corrected nacelle: Notice how wide the bottom is, and the sunken in sides of the upper nacelle sides? Ugly looking and not very good for flight!
Did not want the bomber to look like this so, worked and worked on ideas until realizing it was a triangle issue with all of the bends on the side of the fuselage.
Here is a screen shot of a drawing trying to explain how I finally figured it was a triangle problem. Used an on-line triangle calculator to find the value for side B:
Forgot to mention, I drew a line exactly the length the calculator said Side B would be, then I started a new line at the top of side A, this line was angled down to the far end of Side B, Side C was now in place. Then I measured it, and it was the exact value of side C as shown. That's when I knew it would work.
And the very first part fit test after printing everything out for the top and bottom skins as shown on the post above:
Whew, back to designing the rest of the model.
Thanks to aansorge, bought some 1/32" wire rope to test as a flexible drive-line. $22 on eBay for a 100ft coil.
Should work by creating a loop on the ends, super gluing and then wrapping with thread before supergluing again.
Contacted a company that makes micro wire rope as small as 0.010 diameter to see what a minimum order will be for a spool of even smaller diameter cable...Should simplify power system and minimize power loss of a U-joint, or wire to wire system.
This triangle method will be used on some models I've started, but never finished because could not figure a way to get the skins to match, the bends.
Mike