A build log is not my idea of fun, so please forgive the amateur status. If you are a fan of Jigs, then look away now as you won't see one.
I pondered over how I was going to build the fuselage as I had already built the centre section. To jig or not to jig, that was the question, until I hit upon the idea of building inverted starting at the rear. I always cover my building area with heavy duty wallpaper dry liner and onto this I drew the fuselage centre line to which the fuselage top longeron was tacked into position on the wallpaper along its length using cyano. I then glued the upper and lower rear fuselage longerons into position, inverted the assembly and laid out on the workbench with the fuselage top longeron on the centre line. By measuring each rear former station position, I assembled the formers onto the longeron with the tall rudder post former hanging off and below my work area. I fastened two carbon rods vertically onto the front and rear formers as sight line to check on the build vertical straightness.
Next up was to install the two side longerons which hold the fabric off the formers. On the full size they are just strips of wood, but I decided to make them deeper as part of the structure and inset them horizontally into the formers. The outside edge of these strips has to be slightly rounded.
Here I hit my first problem in that the fuselage waist from the centre section to the rear was a bit severe, but fortunately I was able to obtain photos from Australia to give me some idea of the angles required. This raises a problem with 3-views, in that they only generally show the widest point and what goes on below that can be a mystery. I remade two formers and changed the wheel housing shape.
Then came my next headache - how to create the 'S' bends in these longerons, which were still quite severe.I had been informed that soaking the wood with Ammonia would help shape the wood - DON'T DO IT. I wasted time and broke longerons and it all failed, so back to steaming to bend them. I have steamed wood for years, but it has always been a lash up to create something to work with, so I decided once and for all to make a proper steamer. Details of this are in the forum here:
http://scalesoaring.co.uk/phpBB3/viewto ... ?f=7&t=338
Now I could proceed to add the main side longerons, which are a straight line through the centre section and the lower longeron, passing alongside the wheel housing and clamping onto the rear fuselage bottom longeron in a 'V' fashion.
Now to the question of building the front section. Fortunately the two smaller side longerons are parallel to each other from back to front. This allowed me to mark the stations for the forward formers and glue them in place up to, but not including the nose former as there is no attachment point for them on this former. The main side longerons were glued to the first two of these formers up to the point where they will need to be steamed into shape. As there will be a chance of vertical distortion whilst bending and fitting these, I added vertical supports to the front formers in readiness for the next stage. All is going well so far and lines up accurately. Phew!
