The Model Barn - Slider

 
The kits I bought from the Model Barn arrived yesterday so I've been having a look through the Slider one.
Being a much larger model at 59 inches span than I have built before the parts seem much chunkier. The wing ribs are in 3mm with the other precut wing tips & TE in 5mm.  The wheels are 70mm & look like they could handle a Jumbo, the undercarriage is 2mm stainless steel & prebent to shape.
The fuselage is the traditional box section in 5mm square balsa with 3mm ply formers & some infill at the front. One of my weak points is cutting strip square, both horizontally & vertically , so I have ordered a Razor Saw & Mitre Block.
He advocates using PVA glue, specifically Gorilla Glue which I've never used before.
The kit doesn't include any covering which seems logical when there is a big choice of stuff to use. In the instructions which come on a CD ROM he gives a description of using polyester dress lining, I think he uses it because it looks more traditional.
The plan is enormous, it takes up the whole of our kitchen table & I don't have the room to handle it in my work-room. There is a PDF Scan file on the CD ROM. It is scanned to fit an A4 sheet so I printed it out at 426% on A3 which gave the correct size but used alot of sheets & split parts like the tail over several sheets. So I converted the PDF file to a JPG file online then cropped it using Paint to generate separate JPG files for the fuselage, wings & tail. This gave the fuselage on 3 sheets & the tail on 2 sheets. On the plan there is only the left wing & the instructions say to built the right wing upside down on the layout for the left wing. This would mean building the RH LE over the LH TE etc.  Having a JPG file for the left half I made a file with a mirror image of the LH for the RH so I have both wings on 4 A3 sheets. So I have a total of 9 A3 sheets which is manageable.

 

I checked this as Polyester is often used. It is tougher/stronger than tissue and at this model size could be more suitable.
Generally, silk is heavier than polyester dress lining fabric, although the exact weight can vary depending on the specific type of silk and polyester fabric used; however, most polyester lining fabrics are considered lightweight compared to most silk varieties.

I started building yesterday afternoon. I'm doing it slightly different from the instructions.
While I'm waiting for my razor saw & mitre I have started with the wing which has 4 panels. I've built the two tips apart from the ribs which join onto the inner panels. He doesn't give a dihedral angle or jig which i think is usefull for setting the cutting angle of the spars, LE & TE. The LE is 12mm x 5 mm, the main spar is 18mm x 5mm mounted vertically so there's alot of end showing.
Instead of waving a 5ft wing around while sanding it I think its better to shape each panel separately then to join the two tips to their inner panels and then the two inner panels together. That way the wing is balanced while it is being assembled. He describes building it from one end in effect, so for the last tip the whole wing is hanging off the first tip.
The laser cut balsa sheets are obviously much thicker than on the smaller model kits. On the small models the parts are held on the sheets by small tabs, 1mm to 2mm wide, when these are cut the parts more or less just fall out. He doesn't use tabs, the laser has just cut part way through & looking at the back of the sheet there is mostly no cut lines
visible. When cutting the part out you have to try & allow the semi-cut line to guide the scalpel & make the cuts from a direction such that the grain tends to take it away from the part. Cutting across the grain is obviously much harder & even with the grain you can feel hard spots.
 
The photo shows some parts from the 5mm balsa.
























 

Yes I understand that but sanding anything into an obtuse angle will also give a step or mismatch.
The LE is a 12mm x 5 mm strip mounted vertically so the sanding is only going to produce rounded corners, not like a more square section sanded to give a more sophisticated profile.

Magpie
Just remember that the actual shape of the leading edge can be as important, particularly for the planes slow speed handling, than the shape of the first 1/3 of the wings chord!.
What ever shape the leading edge ends up as just make sure it is the same all the way from root to tip to limit the possibility that the wing will always stall starting at the tip.

By that do you mean the wing will start losing lift at one end or both ends? I assume that if it starts at one end this will cause that end to drop & the model will roll or fall sideways.

 
In the absence of my razor saw I've been pushing on with the tail & fin. I've added an extra rib on the tail at the tip as it looked a big gap & filled in where I expect the control horn to go to make it easier to fit. I'm also intending to fit cross-spars on the tail.
Instead of using the strip of mylar supplied with the kit I've used some mylar hinges I had bought earlier. In his instructions he says to slit the 10x 5 balsa strips & slide the mylar in. I tried it out on a scrap piece & wasn't impressed with the result so instead of the 10x 5 I've laminated two 10 x 2.4 & gorilla-ed them together with the mylar sandwiched between. I was able to do it as I built the tail & built the elevator in one piece & halved it at the end, (by that I mean in the middle at the end). I think the result is far better.
I used my bench drill for the holes for the 2mm wire coupler. It was the first time I had used it on something so small, (drilling 2mm holes vertically in 5mm wide strip) & was pleasantly surprised how accurate it turned out.

I used robart hinges for the rudder, they seem good but I didn't think they would be strong enough for the tail.

 

Busy sanding the tail. I've rounded the LE as per Eric. What do I do with the TE which is all on the elevator? A proper airfoil would be tapered.

I would taper the elevator down to a 2mm trailing edge. It will look better and the edge will  still be thick enough to have some knock resistance.
Left "as is" it will look very unfinished.

I take my trailing edges down to 1mm and that's with foam!
 
 

This was the slider a few days ago, just assembled temporarily for the photo shoot.
I've got the servos & ESC in & working from the transmitter & am now contriving a support for the battery. I am waiting for a charger & prop balancer so cannot run the motor with a prop on yet, (the batteries were at 50% charge so I only ran the motor long enough to check the direction).
Once the battery & prop are set up I can glue the tail & fin on & then its ready to go.
I've joined the
chesterlestreetrmc.wixsite.com/clsrmc
& got my OP & RP registrations so just waiting for the club trainer to contact me.