500 Series Hellcat, 2x size

[jpuke]

I decided to try a project that I have wanted to do for a while. I went to Fedex and had them blow-up the plans for the 500 series Hellcat to 200%. I made photocopies of the smaller parts and "printed" the wood using dope thinner to put the ink on the balsa and pressing firmly with a paper towel. This method works pretty well but when you blow up plans, the lines get 200% thicker as well making it harder to get sharp lines to follow for cutting out parts.


I thought about buying a cowl for the 1000 series Hellcat to use for this but elected instead to laminate balsa and sand it to the proper shape. I bought some "moses magnets" from Easy Built and was going to try to make the whole cowl removable but I didn't buy big enough magnets for the weight of all that laminated balsa so I ended up gluing the thing together and will put a removable nose plug at the front of the cowl.



I still have to get the profile right but I did this same thing a couple of years ago with a normal 16" Hellcat and it worked well. This will likely be a slow build for me with the kids going back to school, deer season approaching, and other commitments but I'll try to put photos up as I get stuff done.

[shawn32671]

nicely done so far

[WIDDOG]

Super Cool. I really like the nose/cowling.

[Bill Gaylord]

Nice build. I did a 125% of the 30" version some years back. The cowl was a real task, made from a mold. The resin got through the saran wrap and ate the mold, but fortunately the glass had set enough to hold shape reasonably well. A good bit of bondo work later and I had a decent cowl, and needed the noseweight anyway. Filing out those 3 little vents was a job.

[jpuke]

Here's how I make the parts from the plans. I just cut apart the copies I make of different parts of the plans, put the paper face down on the balsa, spread dope thinner along the back and carefully rub the paper pattern with a paper towel to press the ink to the wood. I then let it dry out with the wood flat so it doesn't warp (I don't know if dope thinner will warp wood, it's a precaution).


Here's the left wing. I decided to not try to change the leading or trailing edges, I want to see if the 500 series structure will hold up for a larger model. If it works, I can do this with any of the 500 series, provided I can find a way to make a canopy or cowl.

[Bill Gaylord]

Looks like a good imprint transfer method. One thing that looks attractive with your method, is that one could arrange the parts as close as practical before printing so that the wood sheets are used as efficiently as possible. You initial mention of a Guillows replacement cowl just got me thinking that the 39" GP version might fit mine. There's so many of these ARFs out there now, that the replacement molded parts can be used for these scratch builds.