Quote:
Originally Posted by ShadeTreeMech
thank you Robert for the thoughts. It's easier to me to bounce ideas off someone than to just ponder it alone.
How do I go about making a good curve? Only curves I'm familiar with involves my lovely wife, but I don't know how to reproduce them. Unless you count my 5 daughters  |
Shade,once you lock in the angle you're going to use,you can tape a stick of 1-inch schedule-40 PVC pipe to the roof of the van,extending over the back,and by pulling the pipe down to your rear bulkhead position create a nice gentle curve,something the air will appreciate.
The tail I built for the VW bus was made with western red cedar formers and stringers connected with steel angle brackets and screws.
Scribing off the 1-inch pipe gave me the curved lines later cut with a saber-saw.
After the skeleton was built,I clad it with aluminum sheet.
The most difficult areas are the radiussed intersections descending down and inward from the roof to which the back and sides are connected,as they are all compound curves.
I cheated on mine with a lot of relief cuts to very thin aluminum sheet,the smoothing the nasty parts with aluminum duct tape.An English Wheel would have been handy,this is the sort of thing they're designed to create.
Also,foam composite can make perfect sections.
bondo has us all beat,as he is a master clay modeller and he'll make a perfect clay master from which to create the tooling for a perfect composite part.
Do really smooth curves if you can,it's what the air wants.