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Hey all,

I am working on the hull for an airship project and just finished up the frame for the bow. I'd like the plating to be as seamless as possible but don't know the best method to go about it with all of the different contours and angles. Only thing I can think of is to lay a piece of paper over it and try to trace it out, but even that may be tricky. I've also seen something where a guy uses expanding foam and applies some kind of epoxy (after the excess foam has been cut away) that can be sanded down to form.

Any other ideas or tips?

P.S - i'm using a silhouette cutter to cut out all of the frame work, so if anyone is interested, i've got the files if you want to play around with it!

Lets take a trip back to an earlier era of modelling..go by your local Model Plane store the one where they build balsawood aircraft and cover them with tissue paper to get the covering materials for it. They will have literature and mabey a class ..so make a mockup to practice on you can also find several online instructions as to how this is done ..adapt them to your situation ..

Interesting!
I like the expanding foam idea. Might take a lot of effort thought.

I did some poking around and it seems that modern model airplanes use a form of heat shrink plastic. Helpful links I found:
http://www.rc-airplane-advisor.com/balsa-wood-building-sequence.html
http://www.rc-airplane-advisor.com/airplane-kit-finishing.html
http://www.rc-airplane-world.com/model-airplane-kits.html

It depends whether you want the frame visible. The stuff model planes use will leave the frame visible because it will suck slightly in to the voids.

I've used expanding foam for this sort of job before. It's messy and you have to be careful because it can get hot. You can use foam, smooth it out, apply some fibreglass with epoxy resin (epoxy doesn't melt foam, some cheaper resins do), sand it back and then if you need it smoother don't apply more epoxy because it's quite tough to sand, instead use body filler (the automotive variety) to fill any gaps which is nice and easy to sand smooth.

So the foam provides the volume to fill the gaps, the fibreglass/epoxy makes it tough and then the body filler gives you the final smooth finish.

awesome! thanks for the suggestions guys. i'll have to do some experimenting to see what works best. I'm trying to go with the lightest option possible so I can have it suspended in the air easily. The idea is to have it firing a beam into something on the ground, but I'm thinking i'll model the beam around a steel rod or something to act as the support.

I remember reading a blog post recently of someone building an imperial airship like this. He used .3 mm plasticard to cover the bow of his ship. It looked similar to what you have made there, so it might work. Gaps can then be filled with putty.

If the shape is too complex even for the thinest plasticard, you can try using a heatgun to soften it over the model.

Note that I haven't done this myself yet.