Recently I became temporarily fed up with small models so turned to my biggest and longest unfinished project for some light relief - the Tony Nijhuis B-17.
When pondering how to join the two fuselage sides of the B-17 warp free and how to fit balsa covering without distortion of the structure I hit upon the idea of making a jig out of PolyPipe. The first step was to print some inserts for the front and rear formers and also for one former about midway along
This went surprisingly quickly and easily and was right first time I was somewhat surprised. The fuselage can be rotated in the jig and is ideal for sheeting and planking.
At this point the two fuselage sides were not glued together, they were just clamped temporarily in the correct position. After mounting the clamped sides into the jig it was then possible to glue the fuselage sides with PVA. I actually glued about a quarter of the fuselage at a time this worked just fine. So I now have an accurately shaped fuselage ready for planking in the jig. A lot of words but hopefully two pictures will make it all clear.