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 J-3 Cub Construction Project Session #32

32 J-3 New Nose Block for Scale Looking Front End

I was going to finish the remainder of the model's structure before I went back and made the new nose block, but it was bugging me so much that I decided to stop the project and make the new nose block.
 
To recap, the fuselage is already built with the front end's 13% increase in width. To try and change this would be disastrous and probably result in scraping the whole J-3 Cub project. Besides, The added width to the nose does permit room for the insertion of the 3/4" PVC blast tube. Therefore, I had to look at increasing the nose thickness, but how much? I decided to increasing the short 0.56" nose block thickness by the same proportion as the 13% increase nose block width. This provides a nose thickness of (0.56 X 1.13) = 0.85". Keeping the profile thrust line at the same location as on the plans and using the 3-view profile shape, I carefully sketch out the resulting nose block profile on paper. I cut out the new profile and taped it to the front of the model's fuselage as shown below.
 
I cut some medium soft block balsa down to size for the new nose block as shown below.
 
I traced out the nose block profile on the sides of the balsa block and cut out the profile shape as shown below.
 
I shaped the new nose block, maintaining the profile shape, and drilled the 4 degree down and 2 degree right thrust line as shown below.
 
I built a new plug key for the nose block and glued it onto the rear face as shown below.
 
 
The picture below shows  the fuselage profile with the new nose block installed on the front.
 
This is another view of the new nose block. I think you will agree that the new nose block profile provides a more scale looking front end that sort of captures the character of a J-3 Cub, even though the new nose block is not true scale.
 
These results provided me with enough satisfaction that I can now continue the J-3 Cub project...............Tandy 

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