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 J-3 Cub Construction Project Session #16

J-3 Cub Shaping the Wheels

If you recall, the J-3 Cub has rather fat wheels. Through a series of gluings, I laminated all eight of the wheel parts on both wheels as shown below. I drilled out the axle holes and CA'd a short length of 1/16" I.D. aluminum tubing into the center of each wheel for a bearing.
 
The wheels are to be shaped as shown on the plan below. I sent out a message to several experienced
 
Flying Aces Club modelers on just how I should go about doing this and got back a number of approaches. I took certain ideas of each approach I received and came up with one that would work for me.
 
I put two 90 degree bends in a piece of 1/16" wire, inserted one end into the wheel axle tube, and marked the wheel blank with the other end of the wire. Then a 1/16" hole was drilled completely through the wheel where the mark was. Finally the wire was inserted into the hole as shown below. This keeps the wheel blank from turning on the 1/16" wire.
 
On the opposite side shown below, is the 1/16" piano wire I used as the spindle to chuck up in the Micro Mark drill press. Notice it has a wheel collar pushed down against a short piece of 1/16" I.D. aluminum tubing. 
 
This picture shows the wheel blank chucked up in the drill press. 
 
The drill press was turned on and one side of the wheel was sanded into shape using a sanding board that was made for shaping ladies acrylic finger nails. Then I used various grits of emery paper to smooth out the wheels surface. Up next to the spindle, I used tightly wrapped sand paper around a short piece of 1/16" wire to sand down inside the center radius. The wheel was turned over and the same procedure was used on the other side. I actually went from one side to the other several times until I was satisfied the wheel's symmetry. Maybe for the second wheel, I will lay the drill press on its back so the drill press axis is horizontal and chucked up wheel is vertical. Will let you know later.
 
This shows one of the finished wheels. This is the recessed side of the wheel that gets the hub cap after the wire axle is cut off and a retainer is installed. Of course the extra hole in the wheel will be filled.
 
Here is what the wheel looks like on the model's landing gear.
 
Here is a close up of the first wheel.
 
Tandy

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