Cardboard Cutie (oz15168)

About this Plan

Cardboard Cutie. Control line sport model, using cardboard construction. Wingspan 24 in, for Cox Babe Bee .049 engine.

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Update 14/3/2024: Added article, thanks to Pit.

Quote: "For the Tenderfoot: Cardboard Cutie. Try new methods, materials, and skills. Common corrugated cardboard makes simple, light models. Build this one, then design your own! By Loris Rose.

Since I am rather a lazy sort, I believe in doing things in the simplest and easiest way possible. This has led me to depart from the customary built-up balsa-wood structures and to experiment with other methods and materials. I have worked with hollowed-out, carved balsa blocks: styrofoam, Bristol board, and corrugated cardboard. The last mentioned is perhaps the simplest to work with.

I don't know exactly what started me working with corrugated cardboard, or gave me the idea. but the purpose was to develop something cheap, rugged, simple and easy to work with for junior modelers who haven't much in the way of money, tools, or developed skills. I do recall folding up pasteboard airplanes when I was seven years old and swinging them around my head on a string. I remember a man during World War II who built beautiful rubber-powered semi-scale paper airplanes, and another who devised tiny hand-launch gliders out of stiff paper. I have also built whip-powered. control-line, and tether airplanes, which I flew in a gymnasium, with fuselages made of cardboard tubes (taken from rolls of paper towels) with venetian-blind slats for wings.

Regardless of origin, I have found corrugated cardboard to be cheap (it's free!), rugged, and workable, and I have built five different designs. including one free-flight and four control-liners, all of them successful. I taught five different youngsters to fly on the first one before we wore it out.

As to construction. the airplane pictured was originally built of nine pieces of cardboard and a pine block. The wing was one piece (it had no dihedral then); the rudder and fin, one piece each: the stabilizer and elevator, one; the cowl, one; and the fuselage, four. The fuselage bottom, sides and central bulkhead folded up out of one piece. The rear fuselage top was one piece, as was the thin piece between the bulkhead and firewall. The windshield and top of the nose from windshield to firewall folded out of one piece. The cowl covering is a file card, rather than corrugated cardboard.

For tools I have found a Hyde C-2000 utility knife to be quite useful, although a good sharp pocketknife will do. A metal straight-edge, such as a carpenter's square, a sanding block and a cutting board pretty much complete the list, although a hand drill and coping saw would help in carving the firewall block.

In laying out the fuselage, be sure the corrugations run across the fuselage. and not along its length. Cut the bulkhead narrower than the greatest width of the fuselage bottom (where it joins the bulkhead) by the thickness of the two sides. If the cardboard is 1/8 thick, make the bulkhead narrower on each side by that amount for a total of 1/4 in. If it is 3/16 cardboard the bulkhead would be cut narrower by 3/8 total, and so forth.

The extreme rear of the fuselage bottom (where the rudder post would ordinarily be) should be drawn the same width as the thickness of the stock the rudder and fin are made of. If the thickness of the two fuselage sides is greater than this, they can be compressed to the proper thickness.

The edge of a block of wood can be pressed against the foldlines, making a slight indentation to insure the creases forming where you want them and in a straight line. Don't press so hard as to break through the surface of the cardboard.

The wing should be laid out with the corrugation running spanwise so that it can be cambered by slitting some of the corrugations on the underside. The leading edge of each strip thus formed can be inserted under the trailing edge of the strip in front of it. After you have formed the desired camber, these laps can be coated with glue so that the wing will hold its camber by itself. Wing leading and trailing edges can be pinched together and taped with Magic Mending Scotch tape. Corrugation holes at wing tips can be taped also, or left open.

Tail surfaces are made without hinges. Simply cut through one surface and crease the other side. The paper side which is left intact acts as the hinge..."

Supplementary file notes

Article.

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