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Traditional Plug & Mold or "Moldless" Construction?

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AVI

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 25, 2003
Messages
526
Location
Banff, AB
In Martin Hollomann's book, "How To Build Composite Aircraft" and in a more recent article featured in the February 2003 issue of "Custom Planes" magazine entitled, "Building a High-Performance Prototype", he describes a form of "moldless" construction in which a female mold is fabricated from full size fuselage bulkheads and strips or slats of wood stringers. A foam core is then temporarily attached to the stringers until it is covered with layers of fiberglass to form a molded fuselage sandwich skin or shell.

Steve Rahm uses a similar method in the form of a male mold in the construction of the fuselage of the Vision. http://visionaircraft.com Steve has also perfected a "fold-a-plane" method of simplifying this "moldless" type of construction. He mentioned to me that he could build five fuselages using his "fold-a-plane" method in the time that it would take to fabricate a plug and form the molds using the traditional method.

In the construction of his 82% scale F4U Corsair, Tony Pileggi has gone the labor-intensive route of full size fuselage and wing plugs from which he pulled fiberglass molds. http://www.corsair82.com Tony said that this was after he had attempted to build a fuselage using the above Hollomann method. Tony informed me that one of the problems in using the bulkhead and stringer method was the inability to sand and shape the foam core due to its flexibility in the mold. I have not further discussed this with Tony but it's a subject that we'll bring up on our next visit to his shop. Tony, by the way, has done a remarkable job of homebuilding! His is truly an amazing project! The 82% Corsair is about the size of a full size P-51 Mustang!

To get back to the moldless method - The reason I'm writing this is that my own project is presently at the stage where construction of a fuselage plug should be started, and I've got to make a choice.

Quite obviously, the "moldless" method seems to offer not only less work, but a substantial reduction in construction time compared to the plug and mold method. Also obvious is that a fuselage pullled from molds would require much less time and labor to finish, but there is the horrendous amount of time and labor involved in the fabrication and finishing of a plug and the construction of the molds. This is before a fuselage shell can be formed in the molds.

Can anybody offer some advice or let us know the pros and cons of each method? Are there any Vision builders who would like to share their experiences with us, and/or any builders who have used the Hollomann moldless method who would be kind enough to let us know the advantages and the disadvantages of this method of construction?

Alex
 

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