With all the silver soldering complete (the large brackets are for fixing the undercarriage to the formers and will be bent to accurately fit when the formers have been made) it’s time to add the wood cladding.
The legs on some SE5a’s were wrapped with linen so hard balsa could be used for the cladding but the particular aircraft I’m modelling didn’t have wrapped legs, they were left as natural wood, so spruce is the material of choice.
As is sadly often the case these days my local model shop could supply me with an ARTF cloned SE5a but a sheet of 1/8 " spruce is another matter! The next best option was a length of “strip wood pine” from B&Q.
All the blanks are fret sawed out, the fronts routed to take the piano wire then clamped and glued using slow epoxy before the rears are routed so ensuring a good join.
I've got a couple of Black & Decker routers but the best way I’ve found to rout the blanks is to use an appropriate sized “ball ended“ router bit fitted to an electric drill in a vertical drill stand, adjust the height to cut half depth of the piano wire. Hold the blank in place and draw round the piano wire then rout down the middle of the lines. The bit doesn’t have to be exact size, once the router has done it’s job a piece of the correct gauge piano wire dragged down the groove will soon make for a good fit.