Part One: introduction, plan and first steps

In March of 2026 I decided to return to building scale model airplanes. I have been fascinated by the aircraft, private, commercial and military that were built and flown in the mid 20th century. As a boy living in Portland, Oregon in the 1940s I found plans and cut 3 dimensional models from paper patterns. I also used the parts of “orange crates” to build wooden models, cutting the fuselages from the 1″ thick end pieces and wings, tail and stabilizers from the thinner side planks. The crates would have looked something like this:

In those years we worked with what was available.

As a teenager and young adult I did little model building and only began to build balsa and paper models from kits from Comet and Guillow later in life. The models I built from these kits never really did fly, I built them because I enjoyed putting the pieces together and painting them. The early Comet and Guillow models were hung by threads from the ceiling in my work space in the basement. I did actually fly rubber band stick and wing planes .

I also put together many plastic scale models for Revell, Tamiya and others. As our son grew, he joined me in building models becoming an independent builder in his teens. Between us we built a good many. His choices turned to ships, military vehicles and Star Wars models.

Later I returned to building more serious balsa and paper models, many I hoped to fly. Some of the smaller models (dime sized) I did get to fly. I never managed to build straight enough models of any kind from the various kits. A friend introduced me to the actual flying clubs and I watched them fly their models indoors for a year or so. After a few sessions I gained a bit of confidence and brought a couple of my high wing, pretty models to fly. It was disaster, I had not test flown any of these and they were not straight enough to make it. One particularly nice looking Piper model was so out of shape that it twisted in a tight spiral after I released it. Humiliating. This was a disaster and I never went back with them again.

I did not give up on building the models and completed a number of 1/24 scale WW II U.S., U.K., German and Japanese models with wing spans of about 15 inches to 20 inches. I also built three large models: a P-39 Aircobra; a P-37 Thunderbolt; and a completed a Junkers Stuka JU-87 that some one else had begun work and gave to me. The wing-spans of these models were 20 inches or more. These larger models were designed to be powered with radio control. Even though I never had success with free-flight rubber power, I did manage to build and fly a rubber model with cable/string control.

In another post I will catalogue those models.

The build

The airplane I chose to build is a WW II attack bomber Douglas A-26 Invader. The plans for this model were downloaded from a web site to which I subscribed that provided plans from a variety of sources. This model was offered in the 20th century as a flying, more or less scale model by Comet. In the 1970s and later I built many scale civilian and military airplanes from Comet kits, all of those were fighter planes.

This pattern/plan was in .pdf format and full sized. I used an app provided by the source to “tile” this plan so it could be printed on standard letter sized paper. I then taped the pages together. This file was cut into 18 pages and then carefully taped together to create the full size plan.

This plan had several images that included the formers, framing (The darker parts of the fuselage and nacelle) that provided for making printwood patterns that were applied to 1/16x 3 x 36 balsa sheets. I have created an image to show what this looked like this:

These patterns were printed onto sticky pages and then applied to the individual balsa wood sheets. Each of those structures was then cut out and applied to the form on the large, taped plan. This next image shows the parts applied to create the print-wood sheets from which some of the parts have be cut out by Exacto knife for assembly.

The image below is how things looked when I began work on this model. I had made a sticky transfer of the the print- wood for the design and placed it on a sheet of 1/16″ x 3″ x 11″. You can see the frame parts I had cut from the print-wood sheet, lying over the cutting board. The Xacto knife is just below. The sanding block toward the top of the page will be used to smooth out the bits and pieces as they are put together. The various forms you see on the print-wood sheets will all eventually be cut out and attached to the frame.

I began work on this model the first of March. First the fuselage, cutting the frame and the formers. This plan is a bit different that kits that use a frame and formers work sequence. The frame is laid out flat and in the kits the formers are usually half of the main side structures, gluing the frame on the right side first, adding longerons to strengthen and hold the forms in place and then adding stringers between the frame (top, bottom longerons) and the side longeron. Repeat for the left side

In this model each of the formers is the total cross-section of the fuselage. This requires the cross-sections pieces be slid and glued into place along the frame. Keeping these pieces at exactly on the frame is a challenge, both as to right angle and correct vertical orientation. I am not good at that and some distortion is pretty bad.

The Fuselage and the two wing/engine nacelles required this same kind of care. The job I did on the first nacelle was so bad I stopped and rebuilt a totally new one.

The image below shows the way in which the fuselage was put together. The main frame is pinned to the plan and the pieces have been glued together. The four pieces above the main frame on the plan are the right and left longerons that were added once the formers seen below the frame had been put in place, they are laid out in order of attachment to the main frame.

I point out that the nose cone for the fuselage was shaped from 3/16th cut outs glued together and then sanded to shape. You see the outline on the right end of the fuselage plan. The completed cone will be seen in the final set of pictures in this section of the build description.

The last former on the left and the one furthest to the right were added first, the 8th one was added next followed by filling in between these anchor points. Once all of these were in place the right and left longerons were added and finally the smaller stringers. My plan is to cover these forms for the fuselage, wings, nacelles, fin and stabilizer with 1/64th sheet balsa. One issue I had later in the build is some of the stringers were very soft, low grade balsa and were very easily broken in the handling the frame build. I think I must have replaced more than a third of them, searching carefully for 1/16 inch stringers that had better strength, resisting crushing or bending without breaking

By mid March much of the work on the plane had been completed. The fuselage, both nacelles, fin and left wing were done with the left nacelle fitted to the wing. I also had all the ribs for the left wing cut, sanded and laid out on the plan. The right nacelle is the one that I replaced with a fresh build to straighten it out and give it a better stronger shape.

As I said above the nose cone can be seen here. Though this model will never fly and weight is not an issue, I did hollow out the nose cone with a Dremel tool so there is actually open space in the center of it. This cone consists of graduated 3/16th pieces glued together and then sanded down to shape, all by hand. It came out pretty well with the curves matching from side to side and top to bottom.

My work bench faces west and at this time of year and time of day (about 6pm) the sun is shining directly on the work.

This concludes the work on this phase

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