5
General Building Tips
•
Balsa is a lightweight and fragile wood, so you do need to be careful with it; however,
you will also need to use a little bit of force to make everything fit properly, so don’t be
too timid.
•
Join all of your pieces using thin CA (Cyanoacrylate) glue, unless we tell you otherwise.
In general, only a small amount of CA is necessary to glue parts together.
•
Don’t remove any pieces from the balsa sheets until they’re ready to be used. That way,
parts won’t get mixed up or disappear.
•
After you remove pieces from the balsa sheets, carefully remove any of the extra
material from where the piece was attached.
•
Don’t over force your pieces together. If they aren’t going together properly, make sure
you have the right pieces and that they are oriented correctly.
•
If you want to remove the charred edges caused by the laser cutting process, dampen a
cloth with bleach and gently rub the affected areas. Removing the char will not increase
the strength but will make it look better.
Assembly Instructions
Experienced builders may notice that this building order goes
against the “normal” building conventions. We have found that fewer pieces get mangled this
way, since you are building the stronger pieces first. For example, the tail feathers are at the
end of the build process instead of the beginning, so that they are less likely to get underfoot
(which seems to be a recurring problem) and are being built right before they are attached to
the fuselage and each other.
Section 1: Assembling the Fuselage
1.
Press the 4-40 blind nuts into the front former and the 10-32 blind nuts into the fuselage wing
mount as shown below. There are 2 plywood circles on the sheet next to the wing mount.
These are to place behind the wing mount when installing the blind nuts so they don’t go into
your table. They are not glued into place. Make sure to install the blind nuts on the “dirty side”
of the parts. Secure the blind nuts with thin CA AFTER you are sure they are fully seated and
flat against the wood.
