Sussing out fuselage 'Cone' plans

[mastermalpass]

Thank you all for your contributions! I found the 'Rollation Method' video not long after posting my last comment. It seems the former is the backbone to all smooth fuselages, even if the formers can be removed after the skin is formed. Either formers in rollation, or formers on a plane plus paper. I was always weary of using paper because it can't account for foam thickness, but you all seem to get along fine with it, so I shall add that to my toolbox!

That cone calculator (and the formulae behind it) will definitely be a go-to for some of my plans; ones being drawn up in Adobe Illustrator entirely and printed off. But for this printer-less plan, though I am aware I am deviating from the mathmatical approach I mentioned earlier, I think the rollation method is a winner! It looks like it take care of my issue of the taller-than-it-is-wide challenge and looking at the man in the vid, creates a really accurate shape for something just bolted together and rolles around!

@Niez13 I would love for a formation flight, but I don't have the funds to go crossing the Atlantic this year. I shall only be at FF in spirit, I'm afraid. I shall go up a hill and film my plane flying from above, maybe the fields will act like a green screen and we can make the formation flight in post! 😂

 

[Tench745]

Thank you all for your contributions! I found the 'Rollation Method' video not long after posting my last comment. It seems the former is the backbone to all smooth fuselages, even if the formers can be removed after the skin is formed. Either formers in rollation, or formers on a plane plus paper. I was always weary of using paper because it can't account for foam thickness, but you all seem to get along fine with it, so I shall add that to my toolbox!

That cone calculator (and the formulae behind it) will definitely be a go-to for some of my plans; ones being drawn up in Adobe Illustrator entirely and printed off. But for this printer-less plan, though I am aware I am deviating from the mathmatical approach I mentioned earlier, I think the rollation method is a winner! It looks like it take care of my issue of the taller-than-it-is-wide challenge and looking at the man in the vid, creates a really accurate shape for something just bolted together and rolles around!

When you roll foam board the foam crushes but the paper keeps a constant size, so you want to make sure you're patterning to the outside of the final fuselage shape. On my small Spirit of St Louis I wrapped the formers with a strip of foam, maybe 1/4" wide, just enough to pad them out to the right size before making the paper pattern. If you want to digitize that pattern, I have had good luck putting the patterns on a flatbed scanner and then tracing the resulting image in your software of choice.
On some shapes the formers are only necessary for patterning, but that is a case-by-case thing.