Balsa USA 1/4 Scale Cub – Part 4 More Mods – Rudder Shape.

Another modification I recently accomplished on the Cub is to reshape the rudder.  Again, I have decided to just look at the general outline of the aircraft.  I realize that when covered, some of the “ribs” will not be in the right place and anyone looking closely will be able to tell this but in the air I doubt anyone will be able to tell!  They will see the outline, which I hope will at least be suggestive of the real Super Cub!

So here is what I did.  After careful comparison of the shape of each I decided that just a bit of a change to the trailing edge of the rudder would take care of the primary difference between the J3 and the Super.  Besides… I’m always happy to have a little more control surface!  In order to accomplish this I decided I would just laminate a new trailing edge.

Here’s the process.  To start I used my balsa stripper to create some strips of the proper width from a sheet of 1/16″ balsa.  After a quick sand to make a slight flat spot at my “start” and “stop” areas I pinned down the rudder and used some thin CA to tack down one end of the first strip.

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I then bent the stick to shape and tack glued down the other end and then trimmed of the remainder with my Xacto knife.

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I then added two more layers of stripping.  On each one I used some wood glue between the layers and then tacked it in place with pins and some thin CA to insure it didn’t move before the wood glue set.

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Once finished with the third strip, I added some additional support at the point where the existing “ribs” would have contacted the trailing edge.  With just a bit of sanding to round things off a bit and to taper the new material at the ends and mate it up with the existing structure, the final shape was complete.

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The structure is quite strong and once covered I think most folks will find it to be a fair match to the outline of the real Super Cub.

There is plenty more to do in order to get this bird finished so… more to come!

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