Tutorial Intermediate - Douglas DC-3/C-47 - WWII ID Model

[lastvautour]

Jeremy, the pieces of wood need not be exact as we will re-size them during the build. Post a photo once you have done your templates and selected your wood.

Lou

[High Plains]

Lou, I glued and cutout the templates this afternoon. I took the picture before I saw your note about the wood. Do you want a picture of the basswood as well?

I measured the wingspan again. It comes out to 8 inches (a tick above 7.93). I think I can live with that.

Jeremy

[High Plains]

Wait, I think I understand...you want me to go ahead and use the templates to make rough cuts of the wood? I'm sorry if I'm a tad slow on the uptake here.

[High Plains]

So I've discovered a problem. The piece of basswood I wanted to use is not quite thick enough (couple cm's) for the body. This isn't a big deal, except that I live in the boondocks an hour from Hobby Lobby or those big box home improvement stores and I'm not sure whether the local hardware store carries basswood (I'll check tomorrow). Can I glue/laminate tw pieces of basswood together to make it thick enough? Couldn't I hide the seam with wood filler? Or does the body need to be a single piece in order to carve it?

[High Plains]

Couldn't sleep so I cut out the parts. I'm finding basswood easier to carve than to cut and so I tried to minimalize the cuts and then shape the parts with a carving knife. I cut out two pieces for the body in case its okay to laminate them together and carve them.

I took pictures and will post them later.

[Peter]

Hi,

Lou and Barry are the experts. But I laminated two pieces together for my Hamden fuselage and three pices for the engine nacelles. It worked fine.

Peter

[Balsabasher]

Laminating wood is fine everyone,sometimes you just need that extra bit of width etc and we cannot waste good timber,I am answering this for Lou on his behalf as I know we are all on different world clock timescales and if it helps you carry on then thats done the trick.
This is going to be a super little model of the DC-3.
Barry.

[lastvautour]

Most of my models have laminated parts, as like you a decent supply of wood is not readily at hand. When gluing, take care to line up the grain as best as possible to eliminate problems when carving. Make a block of your pieces. The fuselage block should be 3/4 X 13/16 X 5 1/2 inches. This will leave a bit for sanding. The tail fin should be 2 1/2 X 1 X 3/32. When finished the fin and rear stab will be 1/16 in thick. The finished wing will end up being 3/16. I will post photos tomorrow as I have commitments this afternoon and this evening.

Lou

[High Plains]

Photos of last night's work. I was going to work on it tonight, but it didn't happen. I did laminate the two fuselage blocks together tonight and am letting it dry overnight.

Lou, I'll be going out of town tomorrow afternoon and will return Saturday. When I get back, I'll measure the blocks and make adjustments.

Jeremy

[lastvautour]

That is great Jeremy. I have started the blocks as per the attached photo. I can't for the life of me find my stabilizer template so I will have to make another.

Photo 1
The fuselage block is sanded square on the bench coarse sandpaper sheet. I will do this for each part to establish a base line.

Photo 2
Measuring the template against the block. It is going to be mighty close but the template outline just barely fits the wooden block

Photo 3
Can't find the stab template. Will print another.

Lou

[High Plains]

Just as a point of clarification, Lou. It doesn't look like you are drawing a pencil outline of the template onto the wood. Is that correct?

[lastvautour]

Yes, for these tutorial. I also do templates where I don't glue then to cardboard but glue them directly to the blocks of wood. See some of our other projects for examples.

Lou

[lastvautour]

I usually wait until the piece of wood used for the part is flat and to the correct thickness, then I will make the outlines. The pieces you see in the photo are all wavy on one side as they are left over from another project and not to the correct size yet. My favorite tool is the chisel as it gives good control of the amount of wood you shave off. Once I get close to the desired thickness, the template will be used to drawing the part.

Lou

[lastvautour]

In cutting out the vertical fin care must be taken to the forward fin extension as it is fairly fragile until glued to the fuselage. Note that the cut is down and away from the direction of the grain. Cutting upwards in this case would probably crack the wood. Since my horizontal stab template is not complete we will move on to the fuselage on the next post.

Lou

[lastvautour]

The fuselage template is used to draw the outline on the block. Note in the second photo that my block is not cut straight and that the template cannot be drawn on both sides. It is preferred that the template is drawn on both sides if at all possible.

Lou