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Old 12-05-2021, 01:49 PM
smithdr smithdr is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2016
Location: Federal Way, Washington
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Thanks ever so much Ray, Greg, Isaac, Glen, Tyler, Don (it's your fault), Erik and Bob! Means a lot.


Tyler: I just used super glue to tack the paper parts to some thin plywood to make things easier to handle. The little balsa triangles are just made by eye and are there to help maintain the general shape of the paper so it won't sag too much. I find that the mold doesn't need to fit perfectly as the thin plastic has some "give" when you smoosh it down onto the fuselage (especially the rear sliding section). The larger wooden sheets on the ends are just there to hold the plaster. I make the plaster about the thickness of thick molasses and it dries pretty fast. If there are imperfections on the bottom side (like I had big globs) that doesn't bother me since if the mold is a little longer on the sides than it needs to be, that will all get sorted when you add the paper frames for the "final" dimension. Lastly...I just sand the plaster plug very gently with fine sand paper. You can see that I had some gauges that needed to be filled with putty and re-sanded too. My canopy did NOT come out completely smooth. I dipped it into the floor wax to help hide some of that. I bet if you put a thin layer of putty over the whole mold and sanded that smooth, you'd get even better results. I know Glen uses a type of sculpting clay for his plugs and I bet they could be made much smoother and nicer than my plaster. I hope this helps a bit. We are all still learning and my next one should be better still!


Thanks again, folks...Dan
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