Taube horizontal stabilizer, elevator, and fuselage

The Taube's fuselage is a trapazoid rather than a standard square when looked at from the front. It is also tapered at both ends when looked at from above, rather than being a rectangle with a tapered tailpiece glued on like many airplanes. Consequently my building triangles won't help me keep it straight.

The revised plans say to join the fuselage upside down, which seemed like a fine idea until I tried to place former F4 in and realized it was too big to be placed in the fuselage when it is upside down. Sure, enough this looks like something BUSA changed when they revised the kit. The picture in the revised plans shows an F4 former that is about half as tall as mine without the rounded top that mine has. Interestingly the guide to the cut parts on the first pages of the revised instructions show a tall F4 with the rounded top like the one I have. Oh, well.

One idea is to cut the top off F4 and follow the revised instructions before gluing the F4 top back in place after the two sides are joined. The only problem is that there is a center section cut out of my F4 that is so large my F4 will become a U shape rather than a rectangle when the top if cut off, and I'm worried it won't have the strength and rigidity I'd like if I do this. So after sanding the upper and lower longerons and stabilizer supports on the two fuselage sides to an angle that allows them to meet, but still accommodate a 1/4" stick for the rudder post, I have decided to simply join the fuselage over the center line with slow setting glue to give myself enough time to get the sides and three formers lined up and taped in place to dry.

I'm also using a level to be sure the cut out for the horizontal stabilizer is straight. Being a trapezoid the top and bottom of the cut out aren't sitting flush on the stabilizer and because the plans have you place a 1/4" stick in the cut out to keep the space open while the fuselage sides are built on a flat surface you don't have enough wood to sand the opening flat after the fuselage sides are joined without opening the cut out beyond the 1/4" thickness of the stabilizer. Arguably, you could sand them flat and then use shims to build the space back to 1/4" for the stabilizer, but this sounds like a good way to add unwanted weight at the back. I don't want to do that just yet.

The horizontal stabilizer and elevator were straightforward builds. I used a circular saw attachment and my drill press to make the holes in the elevator. It was easy enough that I'll do the same with the rudder and vertical stabilizer. The holes are 1 1/4".