Empennage

I am moving on to the tail section. This will turn my attention to the next complex building task as wel as complete another area of the fuselage that will help assess overall weight and CG for balance. The tail section is built out of laminated balsa, something I have never done before. I consulted several good YouTube tutorials and a friend at the club.

I started out with building the templates from foam (two layers glued with Elmer's glue) that were accurately cut according to the plans:


I wrapped the template with clear plastic (Saran Wrap) and pinned it to my building board. I soaked five strips of 1/32" thickness balsa cut to 5mm wide in boiling water for about 20 minutes and wrapped them around the template with PVA wood glue between the layers. I let this dry for 24 hours:


After the glue was thoroughly dry I unpinned the lamination:

 

Now I can build the fin and rudder strictures:


I repeated the same lamination steps for the two laminated sections of the elevator and horizontal stabilizer, and built them out:


Here's a dry fit look at the Velie:




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