[chevelledude13]

I am putting the finishing touches on a 1/3 scale Knight Twister scratch built biplane. It has an open cockpit. Does anyone have any advice on making a nice, scale looking windshield, that does not fly off on the first flight? It should look like something you would find on a Spacewalker, or vintage open-cockpit bi-plane. Any advice, pictures or comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Noin]

Go buy a piece of bristel board from Walmart or the like. Use that to cut and trim and fit untill you get the right shape you want. Then trace it onto your windshield material and cut out. I glue my windshields on with Weldbond as it stays a little flexible so it won't crack and it dries clear. It is fuel proof as well. Weldbond is not waterproof though so don't use it for float applications. A splash or two of water is fine, it just starts to soften when exposed to constant water contact. I flew in the rain the other day and the windshield glue joint went white again but did not loosen.

[Wayne MIller]

Hi,

I've used shampoo bottles, pop bottles, windex bottles, any bottle that may have an angled necks with the shape you want, check the variety store pop coolers, medicine cabinet etc. The trick is to "eye" the bottle from different angles to find the shape you want and then cut out the shape.

I've also heard of people making a wooden "plug", then putting this into a large pop bottle (clear or coloured), block the plug against the side of the bottle with a small piece of wood (so the bottle doesn't have to shrink as much), then gently heat the bottle with a heat gun, the bottle shrinks and will shape to the "plug". It takes a couple of tries to get the hang of it, and how much heat you need, so check the nieghbours recycle bins for extra pop bottles. I also read, you may want to shrink two onto the plug. The first one gives a "coating" to the plug and the next one will then be smooth.

Hope this helps.

Fly4Fun,

Wayne Miller

[JimMcIntyre]

I use the heat gun/pop bottle solution. You may have to try a few, apparently there are to types of plastic being used to make pop bottles these days, one formulation doesn't shrink.

I used to use RC/56 to glue windshields, then they changed to RC/560 and I think they changed the formula at the same time ... I'm not happy with the new stuff, I now use marine goop from Canadian Tire.

If you're asking about scale detail, that's a whole different story, depending on what you're trying to create, I can try to help.

[chevelledude13]

This is some great advice...I drink too much Diet Coke, so I have lots of bottles around to experiment with. I was hoping to find a way to attach the windshield with tiny screws instead of (or as well as) glue. Do the full size planes have some kind of a metal frame at the base of the glass? I was thinking of bending up some sheet aluminum to make such a frame.

[JimMcIntyre]

Full size tend to be aluminum or stainless frames that I've seen, I've even seen wood frames (sandwich type construction) on some really older aircraft. I've seen more rivets than screws...

http://images.google.ca/images?svnum...aft+windshield