Claudio fuselages

Claudio 18. december 2001 fuselage

For the sandwich tail the proceeding is quite simple, and it allows you to have a really light tail boom. 

All that is required is to have a heavy tail (or the original master) which can stand vacuum pressure.

The goal is to achieve a tail boom made of an external skin, then the core and then the internal skin

First you have to make the half cores, we use to do them in 1 mm balsa or 1 mm rohacell, which is better, even though a bit more expensive.

The half cores are internal skin and core for each half moulding zone that can be made in sandwich is usually from the wing trailing edge zone to the tail leading edge zone, you make them by, after waxing the fuse heavy, laying the internal skin on the fuse (can be 25, 50 or 80 gr/sqmt glass) and then by putting on it the balsa or rohacell core cut to shape, everything goes under vaccum in a bag, 24 hours and you have one half fuse(the upper part in your case), same proceeding for the other half, when finished you trim them to shape in the fuse moulds.

Then you lay the fuse in the moulds as normally, but all you have to mould now is the external skin where sandwich goes, we use to lay a 50 gr/sq/mt glass diagonally, a 60 gr kevlar, and a few carbon rovings top and bottom, once all tissues are wetted you put your half cores in place and apply vacuum, peel ply is necessary as it is absorbing tissue for breathing, leave to dry, and when done trim excess tissues and unite with glass strip, what you get is a stiff tail boom made of 60 gr kevlar, 50 gr glass and internal skin, three really thin layers but in sandwich they behave like much more heavy stuff...trying gives perfection.

Tip: when preparing the half cores first layer can be a peel ply strip 5 cm wide, once the core isdetached from the fuse and peel ply peeled out, you get a terminal zone more bound to being glued internal to external skin with a small piece of glass fabric.

Tip 2 to hold the cores in place whilst preparing the half cores you can tape them to the fuse if you take care in putting resin only where the internal skin and core are going to be used.

Hope it got a little bit explainative, if not, do not hesitate to ask

Ciao