Does anyone have an great advice on how they create bulkheads for the interior of their aircraft. Specifically I’m attempting to create bulkheads for the fuselage of an aircraft. I have the design analysis and breakout diagrams of the bulkheads, but I don’t know a nice way of measuring, cutting, detailing, etc. that would save me time and money on trial and error.
I’ve done the usual searches and have not come up with anything in the forums. Any advice or direction to resources on a process for this would be great.
The best way I have found is to use a contour guage. This is a tool that has lots of metal wires that slide back and forth. By pushing the wires against an object you get a very good outline of it. That outline can be transferred to cardstock or plastic.
I tape the fuselage together first. Then mark out the location of the floor, instrument panel and bulkheads. Next I seperate the fuselage and use the contour guage to get the outline of where the bulkhead would be. Make a straight line on the material that you will use for it (I use thin sheet styrene .020 or .030). Place the guage on one side of the line and trace around it with a sharp pencil. Flip it over and trace it again to get the other half of the fuselage. Use scissors to cut it out. Then sand it to its final shape, dryfitting often so as not to remove too much.
Now you can use strip styrene to replicate stiffeners, stringers, brackets and whatever else you need to, good reference materials are key too this part.
You may also sand the kit part flat and use it as a guide to trace out a new one. Sometimes I do this too depending on the situation.
hope this helps
Darren
Thanks so much for the step-by-step. This is exactly what I needed. At first I thought I might just use modeling clay to ge the correct curvature and size, but your suggesstion sounds easy to do. Where might someone purchase a contour guage and what price range? Any stores and brands would be helpful.
Try this website, I have their catalog and the item you are looking for is in there.http://micromark.com/
I would suggest trying a hardware store or home improvement place.
ooops! Sorry about that. I guess it would help if I told you where to find it [:I]. cnstrwkr is absolutely correct. Micromark has the exact one that I have, item # 14412 and it lists for $7.25.
I’m glad to be of some help. I must admit that I learned that technique from a modeling book. It’s put out by FSM, the name of it is “Detailing Scale Model Aircraft”. This book is full of helpful tips that are easy to follow. If you want to detail or scratchbuild aircraft, then this is a very good book to have at arms length. It has a price of $16.95 on it, but I bought this one several years ago. The price may have gone up if it’s still in circulation.
Darren
Thanks Darren and Claymore. Much help and I will post some picts when I get closer to completing.