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On to the wings and horizontal stabilizers. We cut the wing former, Part 12, in half and laminate it to cardboard. Once it is dry, we cut out the wing portions. We glue these to the areas on the side tunnels that we were supposed to cut out but didn’t. I use Aleene’s Tacky Glue for this, and as the pieces are drying, I make sure they are lined up properly.
As they are drying, we start on the wings, Parts 33 and 34. We cut them out and score the leading edge so we can fold them. The trailing edge of X-15 wings and horizontal stabilizers had a pattern of black and white vertical stripes. To replicate this, I go low-tech. I type of a page of rows of the capital letter I (in 12-point Helvetica Neue) and print them out. I’ll cut out the rows, leaving about 5mm of white on the top and bottom of the rows of Is. I’ll turn it over and fold (not score) it in half and this will serve as the connector to hold d upper and lower wing trailing edges together.
Once the glue is dry, I apply a small bit of glue on the top and bottom of the wing stubs and slide the wings on, lining up the white stripes on the bottom. Once they are on, I run a VERY thin bead of glue along the fuselage/wing joint, but I start about 7mm behind the leading edge and stop at the flap; the bead will be 2.5cm long. X-15s had an expansion joint for the first few inches of the fuselage/wing joint to deal with heating of the airframe in flight; if you can find good photos of the wing, you can actually see daylight at the joint.
We’ll cut out and score the horizontal stabilizers — and we’ll also be using the “I” strips at the trailing edge — but before we glue them closed, we have to form them. The stabilizers actually had the cross-section of an elongated rhombus, so using a straightedge, we’ll gently add a crease from root to tip (top and bottom) of each stabilizer. Then we’ll glue it closed.
I punch a 2mm disk from black cardstock and glue it to the center of the root of the stabilizer; this will be how we attach it to the fuselage. We’ll set the stabilizers aside and glue them on last because while the disks add a bit of accuracy to the build, it comes at a cost of some robustness.
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