PROFILE PLANE JIG

[raby fink]

I have a great profile plane jig that may help those of you who have profiles. Go to the hardware store and buy a large wood clamp with the two screw handles. It lays flat on the bench and the fuselage fits perfect and can be held upright or inverted when you need to work. Hope this helps
Raby

[sleepy gomez]

I use a vise with padded jaws.  It does the same thing

[Randy Powell]

I'm using my normal fuse jig. Seems to work.

[John Stiles]

I have a great profile plane jig that may help those of you who have profiles. Go to the hardware store and buy a large wood clamp with the two screw handles. It lays flat on the bench and the fuselage fits perfect and can be held upright or inverted when you need to work. Hope this helps
Raby

Improvising will get you everywhere!

[Russell Shaffer]

These things work pretty well, too.  This one is a Black and Decker Workmate, but I have two others that were much cheaper.  Mine came from Checker/Shucks/Kragen auto parts, but other outfits have them. I don't have room on my bench for Raby's clamp idea.

[Russell Shaffer]

Randy, could you please post a photo of your fuselage jig?  I have ambitions to build something besides a profile.  Thanks.

[Geoff Goodworth]

G'day Russell

Work Mates are pretty useful when building but Howard Sullivan designed a pretty useful fuselage jig as well.

Find the details here: http://www.nwrcc.com/viewpage.php?page_id=20

Regards, Geoff

[Randy Powell]

Russell,

Mine's pretty simple. There are a lot of examples on the board here. Here is the one Ty posted. My upright are made of metal angle stock, but it's the same idea.

http://stunthanger.com/smf/index.php?topic=650.0

http://stunthanger.com/smf/index.php?topic=5811.0

[Russell Shaffer]

Thanks guys.  I will have to build one of these.  Sure beats the eyeball method. 

[Randy Powell]

Russell,

One of the things you learn as you build these things is, don't do anything without a jig or hard surface. Use sanding blocks and do the minimum sanding with just your hand. Build stuff in jigs as much as you can. While using the Mark I Eyeball is usually good, it's important to compliment that with an actual scale.   

[Russell Shaffer]

Yeah, Randy, I actually just built my first wing with a jig.  Kind of fidelly, but it came out STRAIGHT.  It was a revelation.  Guess I'll have to join the 21st century and at least try to do it right.  The holes in the ribs are still ugly, though. 

[Larry Cunningham]

Fuse jigs for profiles? Are you guys having alignment problems on profile fuselages?
I've never seen it as a problem, even when I was doing simple balsa sheet ones.

I do clamp the laminated nose between two sanding blocks while the epoxy cures,
but it is not to remedy any straightness problems. (Maybe I'm preventing them?)

Maybe I'm just talking about larger (.35 sized and up) profile ships. Or maybe my
some of my profiles were actually twisted fuselages and I didn't notice. I lack the
refinement to tell.

I know it never hurts to have something straight.. ;->

Boat drinks,

L.

"Don't gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock
and hold it till it goes  up, then sell it. If it don't go up,
don't buy it." -Will Rogers