It begins. First off to Lowes. I found a large sheet of marker board for 10 dollars. A sheet of model ply would have been a lot more than 10 dollars and I have more than I need for all the templates. The nice thing about this stuff is the white side for marking is easily cleaned off with alcohol so an Elmer’s glue stick works good for holding down the printed formers and once cut you can easily remove and clean off the glue. It’s easy to cut too. So you can be very precise.

I dug out my old Sears Craftsman scroll saw. Haven’t used it in years but it still works well and did a good job of cutting two test templates. After they were cut I cleaned them up, lightly sanded the edges smooth and hardened them with some medium CA. Once the CA dries I sanded again. This made the edge very hard and slick for the wire to travel over. I have even done this with just cardboard for smaller scratch built foamies.

Tomorrow I pick up my large sheet of 4 inch thick blue foam but before I do any cutting I have to make up today the profile of the fuse and the station points for the templates. Nice to be doing this again after more than 10 years of dormancy.  The movie business has a way of taking over every moment of your life at times. Something I don’t miss but building planes I sure have.