The first step in scratch building this P-47D begins with the fuselage which will be made of pink foam. I am using drawings made by a friend and master builder who is helping me with this project. The templates for the fuselage were cut from the drawings and glued onto some very heavy card stock. I actually used Office Depot Brand Recycled Press board Report Binders as my card stock. It is heavy and will hold up to the hotwire (more about that later) and will not collapse, rather, keep its shape while cutting the foam. The templates were then cut and are ready to use.
The novice modelers, the templates shown here will be used to create pieces of the body. If we were using balsa or ply to make our fuselage, these would be called “formers” and in the plans, drawings or kit you would build from, the formers would make the skeleton of the body of the plane and then you would use wood or covering material to create the skin of the plane.
Many times, these “formers” are labeled by letters or numbers….. sometimes both…. for example, F1, F2, F3, etc.. The templates were are using are labeled using letters…. the front of the fuselage begins with the letter “A” and the last ends with “N”.
To make the first piece of the fuselage, we would use template “A” on one side and “B” on the other. The material between these templates would be cut and that section would be done.
