Miniature Aircraft Sculpting From PVC Board

We recently had a "Cubicle Day" competition at work, for which I decided to make this miniature model of the Bell V280 Valor aircraft. There were two reasons behind choosing to make this. One is that I have been using PVC board (also called sunboard) for a lot of projects lately. It is a sturdy material yet soft enough to cut with a craft knife. So I thought if I could sculpt something out of this material. And another reason is that I work in the company that makes the actual V280 aircraft (surprise, surprise) so this would impress the judges.

And guess what? I won second place in the competition! Not to brag, but I got a lot of appreciation for my carving skills (pretty neat since this was my first attempt at it). So let me show you how I made this.

5mm (0.2 inch) thick white PVC foam board: Buy

Craft knife: Buy

Adhesive

Black acrylic/spray paint: Buy

Some thin black polycarbonate sheets (or cardboard will do)

Sandpapers: 200 grit, 80grit (Or any combination of one fine and one coarse sandpaper): Buy

Image source: Bell Flight, Textron Inc.

This is an optional step. Here, I will share some information about the basic parts of the V280 so that it is easy to follow the steps going ahead when I use the names of the parts.

Just a disclaimer, even though I work in the company that makes it, I have never worked on the V280 itself. And I am not sharing any information about the aircraft that is not readily available in the open internet.

The basic parts you need to know about for this tutorial are:

1. Fuselage: The main body of the aircraft, which contains the cockpit, cabin, and cargo compartment.
2. Wing: Well, y'all know what a wing is.
3. Nacelle: The nacelle contains the engine, transmission, and other components that power the rotor. The special feature of the V280 is that it is a tiltrotor. The engine nacelles can rotate between a vertical position for takeoff/landing and a horizontal position for forward flight. Cool, huh?
4. Rotor blades: The V-280 has three rotor blades on either side of the fuselage.
5. V-Tail section: The tail section provides stability and control during flight, featuring a V-fin style tail
6. Canards: Although they look like canards, they are actually sponsons. Sponsons are protrusions or extensions on either side of the fuselage that provide a location for the main landing gear to retract into.

I used a reference photo of the actual V280 to create a template for the main parts of the aircraft. You can find the PDF template attached at the end of this step.

Print and cut out the parts. The parts to the left, i.e., the fuselage, wing, canards and engine nacelles will be made from the PVC board. And the rest will be cut out of a polycarbonate sheet.

Using the template, cut out the basic shapes from the PVC board. For the fuselage, I cut out two replicas since I wanted it to be thicker than the rest of the aircraft. However, I later realized it was still not thick enough. I recommend making three replicas of the fuselage to make it at least 1.5cm (~ 0.6 inch) thick.

Before we begin sanding the parts, we need to shape them using a craft knife. This will make it easier to sand them to the correct form later.

This is mainly required for the wing and the canards, as they need to be carved into an airfoil shape. Don't worry if it is crooked, we will use multiple rounds of sanding to smoothen them out.

Use a low grit (coarse) sand paper to only smoothen the edges. As you see in the images, I sanded the rough edges to make them even. Especially since the fuselage has two replicas stuck together, it is important to sand them well so the joint disappears, and they appear to be a single piece.

Make sure to do this in a well ventilated place and use a mask to prevent inhaling the particles of the PVC board.

Now, use a high grit (fine) sand paper to make detailed curves and fillet out the sharp corners. Much attention needs to be put into the nose section of the fuselage, the wing and the canards.

The wing and the canards need to look like an airfoil when viewed from the side. See the images above for reference. You'll need to do multiple rounds of sanding with the high grit sandpaper to achieve this. Trust me, this part took me almost two hours! Patience is absolutely necessary here.

These were directly cut from a thin piece of polycarbonate sheet. You can use any plastic lid/container that is thin enough to be cut using scissors. Don't worry if you don't find a black sheet, we are going to paint everything in the next step.

Make sure to get the direction of cuts right in the propellers, or it will look weird after you assemble the whole thing.

I recommend spray-painting all the parts with a black paint. However, since I didn't have spray paint handy, I applied three coats of black acrylic paint. A matte finish is recommended.

Once the paint is dry, attach all the parts using adhesive. PVC board sticks really well with adhesive. If the paint is preventing the adhesive from sticking well, you can use the fine sand paper to sand off the joints. This will remove the pain and make the surface rough so that the paint sticks well.

If you have accidentally taken off paint that is not in the joints and is exposed, you can always paint it again.

I glued a small neodymium magnet to the bottom of the fuselage to attach a metal stand. Initially, I used a bent strip of steel as the stand, but it looked quite ugly. So I later built a stand out of a plastic lid and some more PVC board and painted it black. Then, I stuck another neodymium magnet to the top of the stand so that the aircraft can snap into place.

PVC board is very durable and this piece of art will last quite long for sure. The only thing that can fade is the paint. But you can always spray paint it again.

Finally, go out and show off your sculpting skills!