Old Top Flight Nobler Fit & Finish

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WoW, I hope you feel better now!

As I recall, you were working on a duplicate old timer, or something. Did something go wrong with your horizontal to make you feel that way, or something?

No, it's because (a) the way Top Flight engineered the kit you can't hold anything where it's supposed to be, (b) half the wood is crappy, and (c) the die cutting is horrible even where the wood isn't (I'd have preferred print wood. You can do _nice_ work with print wood).

I'm going to keep their interesting milled leading and trailing edges (which are far from being contest grade balsa, but I'll make up for that by being far from a contest grade pilot), but I've already made up some

1/2" balsa plywood for the "blocks" (their supplied blocks had the grain running the wrong way for strength) and I'll just use some of my own sheet for ribs, putting them in full height and sanding to an airfoil later.

"Tim Wescott" wrote

Understood. Seems like the goood ole' days were really not all that good, sometimes.

I think you should reconsider not cutting new ribs at least close to the right shape. You will live to regret all of the sanding later, if you do not. I suppose if there is not too much to sand it might not be too bad, but it always seems to bite my butt when I do something like you are suggesting.

The method is exceedingly popular among the C/L stunt crowd; I have no idea why. I've never done it before, so I thought I'd give it a whirl and see just how bad it is.

Although I suspect that I'll end up agreeing with you, it'll be better than trying to float a bunch of stab ribs up in the air to correctly mate up to a leading edge. I'd be scheming on how to prop them up the right distance, except that I have to rework each and every one of them anyway.

Maybe I'll rough cut things, to keep the sanding down to the last 1/20 inch or so.