Humbrol Tiger Moth

[Andrew D]

Why on Earth would the government limit the suction of a vacuum cleaner?  Thats bizarre.

Was the EU, with the aim or reducing power consumption.  It's a pain in the UK, as we have a habit of having more wall to wall carpeting that require a bit more ooomph than on the continent where tend to go with hard floors more...

[Piecost]

Thanks for the information about your vacuum setup Andrew.

Tim

[Piecost]

This post feels like a confession of a dirty secret. I have only once before resorted to using DIY filler on a model and never on a wing.

I have been having an awfully tedious time sanding the wings.

I put some effort into pre-sanding the leading and trailing edges and checking their profiles against the ribs, before assembly. But still found problems.

I cut out a card profile board as a reference. This is rather overkill and I certainly am not concerned about accurately reproducing whatever wing section the kit specified. But, the photo below shows how the profile.board helped to highlight the step between the rib and the leading edge.



I ended up adding shims of balsa:


And in particularly bad areas I applied DIY store lightweight filler (shown before sanding)


At least the trailing edge matched well to the sanded rib profile.

[Piecost]

I have glued the wings together with balsa cement (thinned Duco). The root ribs were precoated a couple of times before the final application.

This should allow me to seperate them, with acetone, if a repair or replacement is needed. The 19mm tip dihedral specified in the plan corresponded exactly to the width of Lego bricks. I used tape under the joints and small baggies of lead shot to hold the wing panels down without warps.

Final shaping of the centre section will follow; so that the structure matches each panel