Its okay, there's always the Hangar Queen campaign coming up

Nice work on the Vemon Gary, one of my favourite aircraft. Heres a tip that may help you to avoid oversanding. Having done this in the past I can appreciate what a pain it is.

First up I mark the outline of the part in a thick marker pen. The type I use has ink that is soluable in methylated spirit. This way the ink can be removed when we're done.



Being a wing I have added masking tape handles. These flat parts are almost impossible to hold onto without them. The handles allow me to adjust the pressure applied to various spots. The tape does have a tendancy to loose interest in its job when it gets wet however.



As the part is sanded keep moving the application of pressure around the top surface (this is where the handles really help). Flip the part over and keep a regular check on the side that is getting sanded. In this photo we can see the marker pen just starting to show through the plastic.



In this next photo you can see that some areas are thinning out much quicker than others. Pressure to these areas will be avoided now until we have a consist line around the outside of the part. Without checking like this I would have blown through these areas and had a hell of a mess to try and fix.



Getting through it now, we are just about done. A check underneath shows a couple of areas that still need attention. Incidentally, at this stage 5 rotations on the sand paper will take a region from being underdone to overdone. It doesn't take much. Constant checking is the name of the game.



All done. The outer ring of surplus plastic is hanging on by a coulpe of threads here and there. Running you thumb across the part generally sees it removed. Trailing edges and tail fins usually take a bit more grunt because of the broard surafec area of plastic in contact with the sandpaper. I'm sure you will have noticed this with the tail booms. A prime example where the forward end will sand so much quicker than the fin. For me it was the wheelwells which made it tricky to get the wing roots sanded evenly.



The end result. Note that the wheelwell excess sanded out at the same time.



Hope your don't think I'm telling you how to suck eggs Gary but I could never understand all the magazine articles over the years stating to use the pencil line as a guide to sanding parts out, cause it never worked for me until one day I flipped the part over and could see the line shining through the plastic. I'm sure there are many other ways to skinning this cat but this one works for me.

Regards

Brent