Spitfire series 400 build (newb)

GFG · Post by **GFG** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 3:50 am

Hi everyone

For the sake of being polite I thought I should introduce myself to the group before asking for any advice. I am 26 year old South African and I am busy building a Guillows series 400 Spitfire. This will be my second competed Guillows build so I am still a newbie at this. But I must add that I am learning a lot and I do love working with Balsa wood.

So far the build has gone relatively smoothly without any major hiccups. One thing which is however turning out to be a headache is the alignment of the stringers. I wasn’t happy abouth the position of the die cut notches in the formers included in the kit, and I could see beforehand that they were going to be skew on the fuse.

In order to get a straight fuselage I remade the formers so that I can line the stringers up and then cut the notches. This worked relatively well for the one side of that that was pinned down to the plans. But I do not know how I will approach the other side (which is built in the "air"). Should I glue the formers in place and eyeball where the stringers should be? Or should I cut in the notches before I glue them in place? Any advice from the veteran builders will be appreciated.

In hindsight I should have made all of the notches in the formers before I started to glue them in place. But I was not sure wether by doing this the stringers would come out straigth. I will post some pics as soon as I have the fuselage completed.

Regards

GFG

ADW 123 · Post by **ADW 123** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 3:55 pm

did you glue in the other side without cutting the notches? the idea is that you do cut them on the plans, so then they are accurate. if they are not cut out and the formers are already glued in, i would try to take a straight pice of balsa and alighn it with the other side by sticking it through the fuse just under the stringer, and bring it through the other side and try to visually align it by looking down the fuse from the front to see if the piece of balsa is level.

GFG · Post by **GFG** » Thu Nov 18, 2010 12:27 am

Yes, I glued them in place before cutting the notches. I am almost finnished with the one side and will give feedback regarding this method once I have started with the other side.

Thanks for the advice.

Regards

lukebozek1 · Post by **lukebozek1** » Thu Nov 18, 2010 8:34 am

This is typical of all the kits, sometimes the notches are misaligned, and sometimes it is the second half of the former that is out of alignment. When you lay out the keels make sure that the top edge of each former lines of with the top edge of the upper keel. I pin the tops and align the lower keel as I place each former. One other idea I tried was to glue in the first and the last former, and add in the side keel, using the keel as an alignment for the rest of the formers. You will still see that the notches do not completely line up, but as I place each stringer, I notch out the spots that are out of alignment as I place the stringers. You end up with a few notches larger than the rest, but the stringers are pretty parallel with each other. The Spitfire is a great kit, fun to build and pretty decent scale. I like the 3/4 inch scale since the size is easy to work on, more so than the peanut scale I do once in a while. Good luck!