Bulkhead Templates

I was anxious to get the project underway, but without any epoxy, there was only so much I could do.  As I began looking through the builders' manual to become familiar with the work that lay ahead of me, my razor-sharp brain noticed a common theme to each of the first few chapters; before building a bulkhead, it was necessary to first build a bulkhead template.  The templates are built as follows:

  • Adhere a full sized bulkhead blue print to a piece of masonite using Scotch 77 adhesive

  • Cut the masonite to closely match the edges of the blue print

  • Sand the edged of the masonite to exactly match the blue print contour

  • Blow off the dust

The result is a light weight, rigid commodity that will later be used as a guide to cut out the foam core sections that will be the heart of the bulkheads.  The templates also serve as a baseline by which the finished bulkheads will be checked.

Since this process did not require epoxy, I went ahead and built all the templates required for the fuselage.  The way the builders' manual is organized, I should have built one template at the beginning of each chapter, but I had to work out of sequence to keep busy during the pre-epoxy days.   No big deal.

The fact is, I finished all the templates and still had no epoxy.  Now what?  Well, digging further into the manual, I decided it was time to align the fuselage... another epoxy-free task.

 NG2 Template
Pictured above is the NG2 Bulkhead Template.  NG2 closes out the sides of the nose landing gear well and transfers the NLG loads into the surrounding structure.
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