Molded components for model airplanes are nothing new; they’ve been a part of modeling since the earliest days of the hobby/sport and there have been countless articles about how to mold balsa to desired shapes. Fuselage crutch construction is also something that has been well documented and most modelers understand how to use one of the many available fuselage fixtures to allow them to produce an accurate component. The problem often comes in getting a molded component to match up to the fuselage crutch assembly perfectly. If the components don’t match up correctly, then it becomes necessary to make difficult size and shape adjustments and/or fill open gaps with excess material.

For the past several years my son, Robby Hunt and I have been developing a new system that yields virtually perfect molded shells and also a fuselage crutch that is perfectly shaped to receive those shells without any filler required. This process did not come about all at one time, but we kept engineering the process until we felt we had achieved the objective completely. Now it is time to document and share that process with the modeling community.

Reasoning    
We wanted to develop a method in which the fuselage crutch and the required mold bucks match up perfectly throughout the entire fuselage building process. We reasoned that if we were to build the fuselage around an internal plate, instead of a series of external fuselage supports that are found in the typical fuselage fixture, we could duplicate that plate to make top and bottom fuselage shell mold buck bases, which would in turn produce shells that matched the top and bottom of the fuselage sides. In fact, they couldn’t possibly be mismatched!

The instruction manual for what we have named the Tru-Fit Fuselage Construction technique is quite long and extremely detailed. We have decided to produce this manual in such detail because we want everyone to be able to achieve the same very satisfying results that we have. Each step in the process is critical, and, if followed exactly, you should have no problem in achieving those same perfect results.

The Tru-Fit Fuselage Construction instruction manual is now available on a CD that explains in text and more than 260 photos the entire Tru-Fit system. This CD is priced at $15.00, including postage in the continental United States. Postage for foreign orders will be added on to the $15.00 price. We accept Visa and MasterCard and phone orders are always welcome. Our phone number is 610-746-0106.  

Bob Hunt