Earlier, flybynightkarmarepair wrote:

Due to the small sized, and compond curves on the Baby Bowlus
fuselage,
cutting and trimming the veneers is going to be your key challenge.
Each piece of veneer will need to be fitted to it's mate PRIOR to
gluing it up...

I dunno about that, Ryan, I think you're making it a lot harder than it
was. Hawley and his crew weren't foolish, and they didn't have tons of
time to spare, and they stomped out dozens if not hundreds of Baby pods
in a relatively few short years. And they did it starting in the
Depression, so I think you'll find that they didn't have a lot of money
to throw at it.

I'm thinking that it doesn't necessarily take finely crafted and fitted
strips of veneer, and that the thing can be done with relatively wide
swaths of thin veneer if you've got enough pressure. Note that the Baby
pod has the very nose portion crafted in formed aluminum, and that the
compound curvature of the fuselage aft of that is relatively modest.

I agree that the pressures required to press the veneers into curvature
are probably greater than you can get with vacuum bagging, but at a
guess I'd say not hugely so. If I hankered for a Baby like the one I
watched rot away at Sky Sailing in the early 1980s, here's what I'd do:

I'd start by making a fuselage plug as I did for the HP-24 kit
sailplane (see http://www.hpaircraft.com/hp-24 specifically the 2001
Updates), or perhaps by planking a set of bulkheads. Then I'd dress it
with parting flange features and make right and left female molds of it
in the back yard using regular old concrete. After the concrete cures,
I'd pull the plug out, and then lay up Freeman tooling wax in the
female molds to the thickness of the expected plywood layup. And then,
I'd pour concrete into the tooling-waxed tubs to make male molds of the
inside of the fuselage.

To make the fuselage pod skin, I'd laminate relatively large swaths of
veneer with +/- 45 degree grain and press them between the male and
female mold parts. I'd press the male plug down using nuts on threaded
rods set into the flange of the female mold.

Sure, that plan is relatively time intensive, but the basic materials
are pretty cheap, and once you get the process figured out you can
bring your fellow Baby enthusiasts over to make their own pods before
you turn the tubs into planters or backyard barbecues. Just a thought.

Thanks, and best regards to all

Bob K.
http://www.hpaircraft.com/hp-24