Todd E. showed up this morning to get a bit of a primer on how one might go about carving balsa propellers for these wonderful indoor/outdoor models he's been building from various kits recently.
We began by milling some stock, and marking, carving and sanding to lines. We started with two blanks and took turns switching off to keep the blades reasonably symmetrical.
Somewhere along the way, Takumi, Ling and their two beautiful daughters stopped by for levity.
Todd wanted to attempt a freewheeling prop with a cleat much like what you see in the plastic props. Being the sucker that I am, figured "why not?" and so we cut a "cleat" into some aluminum tubing to act as a shaft for the wire...in this picture, an observant modeler might be able to see what I did wrong:
ANSWER: I cut the notch in the wrong directioN!!!! much cussing had occurred as we had glued the thing in with CyA. Todd, being the optimist had some add'l tubing that fit around the existing piece, so we cut a notch into that one in the correct direction, and then glued it into place. We'll see how it works, but now that Todd knows how to carve a propeller, I expect he will have all sorts of opportunities for trying new configurations.
The model looks like a really nice flier and just with a few practice winds, it flew "right off the board" in our garage (and into my sketching easel -- hope the leading edge spar repair goes well for ya, Todd!)
This is an excellnt afternoon's activity and progress. The little orange plane will on the sides with thin hotstuff to provide a little more durability. A thin strip of carbon fiber on both sides and past the hub will really give te blades some crashproofing. These type of models are the best fun especuially if you can get some nice high, longish flights ~ 1 minute or so.
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