Scale Wendell Hostetler 30% Piper Cherokee Glass Fuselage Build.

Absolutely BEAUTIFUL!

That is one good paint job, no flys no specs of dirt or anything it looks perfect well done.

There's a few trademarks, all in all I'm happy

Been getting a lot of sale emails from National Balsa recently. Makes one wonder if they have a cash flow problem, hope not. At any rate the most recent add was for Aerolite balsa sheet, 25 3"x36" sheets for $99, you pick the thickness, 1/16", 3/32", or 1/8". Decided to order two of the 1/8" thickness for the Cherokee wings. Also ordered 10 yards of the .56 ounce glass cloth.
The 6" x 3 1/4" x 36" weights 2.512 pounds yielding an average density of 6.13 pounds per cubic foot, I'm happy with that and the wood looks great, of course I haven't looked at every sheet yet, leaving the wrapping on until wing construction begins. Another 60 days and I will be back in building season.
Thinking I the wing wing will be fully sheeted and glassed, painted the white acrylic enamel paint that was used on the plug.

Now that flying season is coming to an end time to get back on this build. I have wet sanded the fuselage down to 2500 and hand polished with Maguire's compound. I have four coats of wax on the plug and just about ready to begin mounting the parting boards. In a few areas I wet sanded down to the primer to eliminate defects. Plan to put a few more coats of wax on before installing the parting boards.

Put the parting boards on today. Used melamine shelving boards for the parting boards. Found a damaged 8' x 12" board at Lowes and got it for $10, had to pay full price for the 48" x 24" board though. There are 7 coats of wax on the plug and three on the parting boards. Hope to get 8and 9 on today. The alignment marbles are set with melted crayons, it worked much better the clay I used previously. Just might smear some epoxy on tomorrow.

That qualifies for the like button…………

Woke up early this morning because I had a reason to get to work. Put on the final wax coat and clayed the parting boards to the plug. Sprayed on several light coats of PVA and 2 final wetter coats. Later today I will put the tooling coat on. It is greener shade than the photo depicts.

Put the tooling coat on this morning. Using US Composites 635 thin epoxy thickened with carbon powder and colloidal silica. Mixed 60 grams of resin and 20 grams of hardener at a time, it took three batches to cover the fuselage. Next will be a .56 glass layer. Ordered 2 gallons of epoxy yesterday and glass cloth to complete the mold. Haven't decided yet on what the layup will be be but currently thinking carbon fiber, the fin will be regular glass cloth as I plan to locate on of the receiver inside the fin

Wow, total eye candy for me. I'd love to be able to do this one day!