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Guillows Series 300 - Cessna 170 by plasticbuddha. Viewed 883 times.
Build Thread
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| Image Comments |
| plasticbuddha | 04-Sep-07 17:59 | |
| plasticbuddha | 04-Sep-07 18:06 | | After a mishap with the Mustang (fell off the table and broke the horizontal stabilizer and rudder) I decided to shelve that project for the time being. In the final analysis, it became too heavy to fly with all of the modifications and corrections. I should have simply enjoyed it for what it was, a simple $9 kit and built it completely stock. I did learn quite a bit. Moving on, I went back to building the PT-17 and I also started another; Series 300 Cessna 170. Actually, I have two of these kits as I intend to build one box stock to fly and another as a static display. Unfortunately, both kits had some very bad "die crush"!!! Either Guillows needs to sharpen their tooling or use better wood or both. Anyway, the tail surfaces are finished and covered using kit tissue. Hope I have better luck with this one. |
| hjlittman | 06-Sep-07 18:05 | | Guillows is using better wood. The current production wood is 10 pounds per cubic foot, very flyable, but not as resistant to the fingers of inexperienced young builders as the former 17 plus pound per cubic foot wood was. Their dies are, obviously, wearing out. The worn dies cut more poorly on the lighter, softer wood. They have ordered two new laser cutters and have a young lady working full time on re-drawing the parts layouts for the laser cutter.
The next series to go laser cut will be the 400 series. I order to check the accuracy of the redrawn parts layouts a model has to be cut and built. The same young lady builds the models. It generally takes at least five cut and build sessions before the bugs are out of the laser cutting routines for a model. How would you like to have that job?
The 500 series models will probably never be laser cut because it would raise the kit prices too much for models that size. However, the sales volume is high enough that it may be worth the $7000 per set to make new dies for them.
I am building a 300 series, Cessna 170, with current production wood, for a contest on Sunday. To save time I am building box stock except for my usual nose modifications, and of course Japanese tissue covering. I looks to come out 20 grams lighter than my last 300 series model (Aeronca) which flew rather well. |
| John M Oshust | 06-Sep-07 19:18 | | How do you get so many words into your comments. My comments seem to cut after a bit? |
| jgood | 06-Sep-07 19:50 | | Howard, I think that young lady might have a dream job? :) |
| cdwheatley | 07-Sep-07 02:34 | | John, I don't know why but for some reason the comment attributed to a photo when actually uploading it can only be relatively short. Subsequent comments, it seems, can be of any length! |
| plasticbuddha | 08-Sep-07 16:06 | | Hi hjlittman - The comment I made was simply out of frustration as a consumer (two of the same kits with extremely poor quality die cutting wise) and not intended as an insult to Guillows. I happen to like Guillow's because of their relatively scale subjects and their kits are a good value. I'm certainly glad that Guillows is taking steps to improve their quality given the distinct possibility of a Asian (China, Korea,etc.)company breaking into the domestic balsa plane kit market with better quality die cutting or laser cut and superior wood is very real. And while I think the young lady has a challenging but a "dream" job nonetheless, I have no intention of taking her job away ;) Besides, she probably has better skills than I have especially covering with tissue (lol). |
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