The Range foam board

[Rich Griff]

We finally went to the range shop some twenty miles away and got some foam board.

 

Any/all suggestions welcomed but how do you guys use this material please ?

 

Paper on or off, glues, joints/joining etc. Etc. Etc.

 

Thanks...

[Dad_flyer]

I am not familiar with that particular board. There are different types with different foam and paper/glue that need slightly different handling. I mostly use Hobbycraft (Westfoam) board, which is 5mm and is stiff but quite heavy. An A1 sheet is 240g. Half of the weight is the paper because it is a filled art paper. The paper is bonded very firmly and only really comes off with hot water.

 

I use the folded construction techniques from Flitetest, with hot-melt glue. They used to do all their plans free to download as well as the kits, but they have not released many of the newer ones. The foamboard they are designed for is thinner and lighter, so models come out heavier and needing nose weight. Taking the paper off the thicker/heavier Westfoam board in places can help, the foam core is quite stiff on its own. However the heavier models still fly well, there is a recent thread on the spitfire. Enlarging the models also works well, the stiffer board is strong enough, and the A1 sheets are bigger than the Flitetest foam sheets, so it works out pretty well.

 

I find the Flitetest wing process particularly simple and effective. I modified it to a smooth symmetrical section and a vertical ply doubler on the spar, for my current 62" Stik. Masking to spray paint took longer than building the wing.

 

There are others here who use foamboard in more conventional construction alongside balsa.

 

[Dad_flyer]

These are some threads, first the spit:

One of my early builds:

Mastery of foamboard:

 

 

Nigel using multiple materials together:

 

[Rich Griff]

Thanks dadflier, will study later...

 

Turns out home bargains in covland stocks foam board, the wife spotted it there this morning..

 

The last time I was in there I asked a members of staff...no, not stocked.

 

I did the same in the range yesterday, girls said no, but the old guy said yes, follow me...

 

I will check home bargains again on Monday.

 

 

[Daren Cogdon]

My two Spitfires, built from the Westfoam material.

 

Another is on the way....! 

[Graham Davies 3]

Welcome to foamboard modelling!

 

Not used the Range's product, but used both the flighttest and Hobbycraft stuff. Flitetest backing paper comes off very easily, so I tend to use it without. HC is much harder to remove, but as @RICHARD WILLSsays, it can be removed with some patient use of the iron.

 

For wings, I use paper ON for ribs and off for skins although my next model will leave the paper on the outside. For fuselages, I tend towards a box construction with paper ON, and take both sides off to curve it to make decks. I then cover in brown paper and PVA to stiffen the surface and give a great painting surface. You can curve the stuff by dragging it along the edge of a table (the flitetest videos show this very well). You can create compound curves by carefully cutting slits to allow you to reglue these parts. It sands OK once you've done this. I glue with POR, which can be used as a contact adhesive, or wet to give you some positioning time, or hot melt. I do tend to get myself in a mess with this though!

 

Regarding design; I'm not a fan of the 'lobster tail' appearance, so use more conventional techniques to avoid this. Use plenty of formers under fuselage decks to prevent the starved horse look. For the wings on my RE2005, I used hard balsa 1/4" square spares with 1/16" webbing and ply dihedral braces which all locked into retract plate rails. All of these were attached to lightply ribs in the centre section. The leading edge is two laminations of 1/8: balsa. The tail is two thicknesses of Hobbycraft foamboard, folded at the leading edge and tapered before joining at the TE of the elevators. The curves where the foam is exposed were covered in copier paper. In hindsight I would remove the inner skin as it's a bit heavy. The tail is quite stiff enough. This model needed a big 4S 3700 pack and a bit of lead to balance, although at 55" it still weighs a few ounces over 4lb and gets over 10 minutes from that pack.

 

There's a lot more to come from this material!

 

Graham

[Daren Cogdon]

Nice!!