Help! Back to Balsa after 23 Years!

[gjgflitetest]

Hi All,
Feels good to be here! In 1996 I made a Guillow's Spitfire (~17 inch wingspan). Painted it, flew it once. Now that COVID-19 has given me a little more home-time, I've ordered a Dumas F4F (the smaller one), which should arrive today. Here's my questions:
1) Gorilla wood glue okay (the Gorilla WOOD glue, not regular Gorilla glue)?
2) I'm going with foamboard over parchment for the assembly. Anybody have suggestions for ways to make the fuselage as straight as possible with minimal specialized tools?
3) How high does Dumas rate for balsa models? My memory is that the Guillow's was pretty good, in terms of fit and plan details. I have a Comet Mustang and would have started on that but it is larger and looks much more tricky.

I've done a little bit of searching, and haven't got answers to the above questions, but I'm new, so I hope you'll all bear with me.
Thanks,
Geoff

 

[Tench745]

Hi All,
Feels good to be here! In 1996 I made a Guillow's Spitfire (~17 inch wingspan). Painted it, flew it once. Now that COVID-19 has given me a little more home-time, I've ordered a Dumas F4F (the smaller one), which should arrive today. Here's my questions:
1) Gorilla wood glue okay (the Gorilla WOOD glue, not regular Gorilla glue)?
2) I'm going with foamboard over parchment for the assembly. Anybody have suggestions for ways to make the fuselage as straight as possible with minimal specialized tools?
3) How high does Dumas rate for balsa models? My memory is that the Guillow's was pretty good, in terms of fit and plan details. I have a Comet Mustang and would have started on that but it is larger and looks much more tricky.

I've done a little bit of searching, and haven't got answers to the above questions, but I'm new, so I hope you'll all bear with me.
Thanks,
Geoff

1) As far as I know Gorilla wood glue is just another PVA wood glue like Titebond or Elmers wood glue. It should work fine. I use Titebond2
2) Do you mean you're covering DTFB with parchment paper to use as a building board? If so, DTFB is a bit thin and tends to have a bit of a warp to it, not ideal. If you mean something like construction foam, anything 3/4" thick or better would be pretty flat and give you plenty of material to pin through. I have also used drop-ceiling tiles; the one I have was good for a year or two but then it warped from moisture absorption and poor storage.
3) I've not had the opportunity to build any Dumas kits. As for Guillows, they have a reputation of using heavy wood and the smaller models suffer from the extra weight. There are some guys more into balsa that can probably give you more informed answers.