Corrugated Fuselage

Professor Junkers pioneered the use of Duralumin, an aluminum alloy, in his fighter design. At the time, the relatively new material was light and strong, but didn’t possess the rigidity required for the stresses of aircraft flight—hence, the corrugations. Reproducing these corrugations has always been a challenge for scale modelers. I experimented with several methods to duplicate them but found them to be extremely labor intensive, adding excessive weight, or both. I decided to try Balsa USA’s Corrugation Kit for ease of application and light weight. While it won’t satisfy the scale purist, it does a good job of duplicating the effect of corrugations. The kit consists of eight rolls of prespaced vinyl strips with backing and transfer paper. I initially feared that the paint wouldn’t adhere well to the vinyl, but I was glad to see that the latex paint held tenaciously to the strip.