Building The Wings

I have gotten 4 - 6" x 1/2" x 48" Aspen Boards from Lowes to make the struts with. Tonight I started on the inner struts. I got them cut out and then took the belt sander to them to match them up. I will have to tomorrow mark the center of the sides and then start carving that sharpened shape to them. I will then router out the design which goes on the outboard side just like on the full scale.

The reason I chose aspen is because it is lighter weight and slightly softer than poplar and because there is almost no visible grain to it which will make it look really nice once it is varnished.

NOTE: One thing to do when you get your kit, is to get 2 ziplock baggies and label them Front Spar and Rear spar. Then as you pop out your ribs take the little square cutouts for the spars and put them in the appropriate bags. You can trim these later and use them for the webbing in your box spar if your building the larger versions. for them to fit you probably will trip 1/8 inch off of one side and the top. that should allow it to fit inside. Just test when you start before adding any glue to make sure you get the size right.





Well I got back from dads with his draw knife. For those of you youngsters scratching yer heads wondering what a draw knife is, the first pic is of an old belguim draw knife dad let me borrow. The cool thing about using a draw knife on these struts is that more than likely thats what the craftsmen used to shape the struts on the original airplane.

As you can see a draw knife is basically an 8 inch wide hand plane but uses 2 handles to "Draw" it to you and makes for some really nice curly cues hehehe

As you can see from the second picture I got the shape pretty close just need to spend some time hand sanding the edges in so that they are all even. From the end view it looks thicker than it actually is. For the most part it is a knife edge but I didnt want to go all the way to the end and chance taking a large hunk out





Here I have been working on routing out the inner struts. I have just done the outsides I still have to do the insides after I smooth out the insides.







Here are a few pics of my wing ribs which have arrived and the cardboard patterns for bending my wingtip and other tubing. As you can see its gonna take me years to get everything capstripped esp all those riblets and thats only abt half of them in the pics I still have more to cut out in the stacks behind the pics.

















Construction Begins

Here you can see my Bundles of spar material and some of the capstripped ribs



Here I Built the Top Wing Center Section so you guys can see easier how it all goes together. Since hardwood dowel is cheaper than aluminium tubing and also is a few grams lighter weight I am using dowel as the TE for the wings.

I used a couple of those Metal Shelf bars across the LE so that everything will be straight. I also started with just the bottom and 2 sides of the box spars. Where every full length rib is located there is a web that goes in the middle of the spars







Here I started trimming my spars for fr one of my midwing panels. I need to trim the webs for it yet and as you can see there is a little lip on the bottom spar for the wingtip to rest on. the top of the spar will then sandwhich it in place when finished





















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