I need six ribs on the body to support the vertices of the hexagonal skin. First, six lines are drawn down the entire length of the tube. This is when I discovered that my longest piece of aluminum angle is only about 18" long, so I needed to make each line in two sections. Usually alignment lines aren't this long.
In my old test piece, I used 1/8" thick ribs, and found they were a bit thicker than necessary, requiring too much sanding. So for the real thing I'm using 3/32" ribs, about 3/16" wide. I decided pretty early on that there was no way I was going to be able to manage 24" pieces, so each rib will be made from two 12" pieces. The ribs will be hidden so the seams won't matter.
Using sandpaper wrapped around a D12 motor casing, I did a couple of passes down the underside of each piece to hollow it out
just a bit, so the piece would sit down nicely on the tube. Probably wasn't necessary.
Time to glue. First I did the six pieces at the "top" of the tube, which are simpler because I don't have to worry about the fins. After applying a thin layer of TBII to a piece, I laid it down adjacent to the pencil line. It took quite a bit of care and fiddling to keep the entire length of the piece next to the pencil line, since the wood strips are quite flexible and they will quite easily "drift" until the glue is set.
Here are the first six pieces, finished. Velcro is wrapped around the end to hold down one of the ends which was wanting to lift up.
They came out fine, but the fun is only beginning.
Oh, the red stripes are just a marking to help me keep track of slightly longer vs. slightly shorter pieces (an unimportant detail for purposes of this thread, but I figured someone might ask).