Fuselage, part 2

Now that I have the two matching fuselage sides I started to plan the structure. I've never built such a structure before the part that seemed difficult was creating the sharp breaks in the longerons. 

I started with preparing the two main formers, F2 and F3. Instead of 1/8" ply I used 1/16" and reinforced the top and bottom with a 3/32" hard balsa strip:



For the initial structure setup I followed the build article and carefully cut the longerons behind F3 and in front of F2. Then lined up the sides, top-down, on the plans and glued the former:

 

Once the glue cured I pulled in the back of the fuselage and then the front over F1, which I cut from 1/16" ply and hollowed to allow room for the battery. I took the precaution of wetting the doublers before attempting to bend the fuselage sides, this allowed the longerons to have a sharp bend while maintaining flexibility of the 1/16" doubler sheet:


I filled in the notches in the longerons by gluing in thin balsa wedges that I later sanded down:


The cross braces are shown here:


Now that the structure is mostly complete it feels very sturdy and light weight. Managing the bending and cuts in the longerons was not as big of a challenge as I thought they would be.

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