tph1

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I'm going to build a plane that has a fiberglass canopy and turtledeck on top of a balsa "box". What is the best way to finish it? glass and paint or can it be covered?

ZeppelinIII

My vote would be to cover (monokote, ultracoat, pick your favorite) the fuse and paint the fiberglass seperately, and then glue them together afterwards.....if that's not possible then my vote would be to glass fuse and paint entire fuse....my reasoning (opinion) is that paint looks great, and isn't too difficult, plus adding the glass can be pretty easy, and covering (monokote, etc.) fiberglass is a real b****

tph1

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Would have to glue the fiberglass on before finishing, the bottom of the tank and servos would go in there. How do you mate the cloth on the balsa to the fiberglass piece?

ZeppelinIII

One other thought is to cover the balsa, then install everything you need inside, then glue glass pieces on, mask off edges, and hide rest of plane with newspaper then paint them

if you want to glass it there are tons of posts on here about it....the way I've been experimenting with is to use water based polyurethane (and there are argument about why water, or why not) to set down 0.5 oz. cloth. It'll only take a real light coat, too much will warp the balsa (a problem with the waterbased poly) I do this to add all of the pieces of glass i need, then i trim all the edges i have and go over the whole thing with another light coat, let that dry, then i go over it with a medium coat of poly mixed with corn starch (cheap easy filler), then I sand it, prime it, sand it again and then paint it....

Zep

tph1

My Feedback: (12)

thanks ZepIII, still don't know which way to go, may have to go to plan B, whatever that might turn out to be