I have not make a lot of progress on the J-3 Cub today, but a little. I finished with the two wing struts shown below. I sanded the leading and trailing edges of the struts and gave each two coats of clear dope as shown at right. I want to sand the beveled edges to fit the wing/fuselage junctures before I paint them Cub yellow.

I will be using the .005" styrene material shown below for making the windows and windshield.

Called Mike Midkiff today and we discussed the procedure of making the side window and windshield. The velum side window pattern is shown on the plan below.

The velum side window pattern is shown on the Cub fuselage below.

This evening I cut out the velum windshield pattern that I traced off of the plan this afternoon. I spent a considerable amount of time taping and trimming, taping and trimming, until I finally got the windshield pattern's custom fit to the front of the cockpit structure that I was looking for. The three pictures below show the final fit of the velum windshield pattern. Front view of the windshield pattern taped onto the fuselage.

I purchased some Super RCZ56 adhesive shown below to bond the Styrene with. Do you have a recommendation for a better adhesive than this?

This shows the velum pattern tracing for the windshield on the plan. Like I said, not much progress, but a little..........................Tandy

This picture just shows the left side view of the windshield pattern taped onto the fuselage.......Tandy

I cut a new side window out of styrene and again applied the Formula 560 glue to the right fuselage frame. This time I very carefully lined up the new styrene side window and put it in place, requiring very little movement to adjust it. Again I cleaned off the excess Formula 560 glue with a damp rag and let the side window set for about an hour. Then I repeated the process installing the left side window with much less trouble.

I took the picture below, intentionally catching the light reflection in the side window, so you could see that the side window was in fact in place.

I think the side windows came out pretty good, especially for my first time. However, I am going to have to think along time about how to glue the windshield on! Because of the windshield's curvature and all of the gluing area, it is not clear to me how to put glue on the fuselage frame and then get the windshield into position without screwing it up. Do you have any suggestions?.................Tandy

The picture below shows the right side view of the windshield pattern taped onto the fuselage. As you see, I got a surprise to discover that the windshield pattern actually went on around the front angle brace and back to the first cabin vertical brace, so I will have to go back and trim off the front of the side window pattern. This will make gluing the windshield on a much easier task than I first thought.

I cut out the .005" styrene for the first side window today. I applied the RCZ56 white glue to the fuselage right frame and put the styrene side window in place. As I was trying to adjust the position, I made a big mess out of the side window. %$#@! I ended up taking the window off because I was having trouble with the glue and then cleaning the RCZ56 glue off of the fuselage frame with a damp rag as best I could. I already had some Pacer's Formula 560 Canopy Glue shown below so I decided to try it instead of the RCZ56.

Then I took the picture below without the light reflection so you see the installation of the side windows.