Easy to make wing fillets

Add strength and detail to your scale plane

A feature that enhances both the function and the appearance of a scale airplane is appealing to all model builders. It offers the best of both worlds. Wing fillets are a perfect example; they increase the strength of the joint between the wing and the fuselage, and they make any model whose fullsize counterpart featured wing fillets look much more authentic. When you add an easy, inexpensive technique for creating strong, great-looking fillets like the one featured here, you have a recipe for success with any scale project.

Bondo, or any brand of polyester automotive body dent-filler, is excellent as fillet material for three reasons. It's easy to apply and sands well to make close-fitting and good-looking joints. Its adhesive properties add strength to the joint between wing and fuselage. It's inexpensive; a small can will be enough to make fillets for many models. Brian Laird taught me this method, and he recommends it for his Slope Scale PSS warbird sailplanes and slope jet models.

WHAT TO DO

After you've covered your wing and fitted it to the fuselage, apply two layers of masking tape at the edges of the area where the fillet will go on the wing. This allows you to sand at the outside feathered edge while it protects the wing covering from being damaged by your sanding block. Mix a batch of auto body filler according to the manufacturer's instructions, and apply it to the wing joint with a round stick, (Popsicle sticks or tongue depressors are ideal, depending on the radius of the fillet you want).

As the body filler begins to harden, quickly sand the fillet roughly to shape with coarse sandpaper wrapped around a dowel of a suitable diameter. The body filler will harden rapidly, so a timely rough-- sanding now will save you work later. Apply filler and sand as many times as necessary to build up the fillet to the thickness and shape you want. If you're an accurate sculptor, you may need only one or two applications; if you're less practiced with auto-body filler, you may be happier with the fine control offered by building the fillet up with three, four, or five layers.

After the layers have been applied and rough-sanded, let the material cure fully and then do your final sanding with successively finer grades of sandpaper. Wet-and-- dry sandpaper lasts longer when you dip it into water to clear off the sanding dust.

This technique really is as easy as it sounds, and the result looks great. The materials are all readily available and very inexpensive, so you can experiment a little while you get the hang of working with the auto-body filler. On your first try, build the fillet up in layers; this takes only slightly longer. Try adding fillets to your next scale project;, this technique can really improve the look and function of your model.

CGM (Carl Goldberg Models), 4734 W. Chicago Ave., Chicago, IL 60651; (312) 626-9550; fax (312) 626-9566.

Slope Scale; 12935 Lasselle St., Moreno Valley, CA 92553; (909) 924-8409; http://ourworld .compuserve.com/homepages/slope_scale.

Copyright Air Age Publishing Apr 2001
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