Bending the fuselage sides might appear to be a difficult task with likely failure. However, it’s actually pretty easy if you follow the steps in the plans, and do what I did to help manipulate the plywood.

The fuselage side starts straight of course. But soon will bend. You start by soaking the area of the rear "dado" on both sides before placing it on the jig.

Don't force the bend. It may seem that little is happening at first. But with the minimal weight of a gallon paint can and continually steaming, it will start coming down after 10-15 minutes.

The next step is repeated steaming of the fuselage side. This is done by placing a soaked rag over the bend point and using an Iron with the thermostat turned up to "steam" and continually running it over the rag. KEEP THE RAG WET!!

See! It's getting closer. Just keep that Iron steaming the wet rag over the wood. Almost there!

The simple bending jig works just great.

The last step is to run the hot iron over the fuselage for about 2 minutes to dry out the board a bit by sucking out some of that water that we soaked in.

Finally bent right to the table top. It took about 20 minutes of steaming.