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