I’ve watched your 10 videos and enjoyed them all. What I took away is your a man of detail. And when your home building a airplane, you need detail. Those small issues if you don’t take care of while building could add up and come back at you in a not so good way. We wouldn’t want to see that. It’s fun watching you work out problems and solving them. Wish I lived closer I’d give you my THEIN dust separator
Thanks Bruce, I'm learning to be a detail person. I'm ok with working with wood, but generally stuck with carpentry, recognising that cabinetry is a whole different ball game regards tolerances. This project is more like engineering with much finer tolerances again except, unlike metals, wood changes dimension depending on the environment (temp & humidity), so a perfect measurement last August, is no longer so perfect (thinking those cap strips). I haven't read your earlier comments yet, UA-cam threw this one up first :-)
New subscriber. I appreciate your dedication and willingness to make mistakes and learn from it. Few have that kind of patience. I look forward to seeing this progress!
I’m a woodworker for hobby. I love anything that flies. I found you channel and I’m in Heaven. WW1. Aircraft I’ve loved since a child. Just started to follow you. CHEERS
Rare video. As s young Woodworker who loved aviation I was asked by the Tucson air museum to help restore it's wood aircraft. I was mightily torn that I needed to work full time to survive instead. Their frailty in combat is still legendary and their pilots iron willed to take off each day in the face of almost certain death. 6 weeks was the average life span of s fighter pilot in WWl.
That would have been a great opportunity, I feel for you. We don't have those opportunities in NZ and to be fair, as a lad I wouldn't have been their first pick! Another factor in that death rate was how rapidly the technology improved and swung the odds towards one side or the other. I'm reading "Bloody April" by Alan Morris at the moment. The Brits were flying pushers and had to support the latest Brit offensive. The Germans were equipping fighter squadrons, itself a new idea, with a single seat "puller" monoplane firing through the propeller. The Brits lost something like a third of their pilots in a month. Very interesting read, if a tad eye-opening!
@@MattProject Righto. I do remember a prominent Kiwi sheep baron dabled in historic aircraft and built a replica Polikarpov I-15. Perhaps it might be possible to inform us non-Kiwis about NZ aviation. I have many NZ DVDs of movies and TV series. None of them Lord of the Rings. A few of your actors are flying under the radar as does Karl Urban. Is there info on NZ pilots in both WWl and WWll? As a youngster I read all the WWl books I could find. The books and movies certainly censored all the nasty bits. You certainly are an ambitious bloke to tackle such a project. My cap off to you.
@@MattProject I have worked with all of the acrylic syrup resins. Your conclusion were correct, wood adhesive is far better. I would like to enter the discussion to suggest using the exterior water proof adhesive to cover water related occurrences. It's good to be dealing with fiber issues. Your subscribers are well concerned about your brave project. I'm in the desert area of Tucson where wood issues are more extreme due to very low moisture. Adhesive open time is very limited. I sometimes use the original PVA white glue for difficult gluing for more positioning time. I remember the introduction of the first synthetic wood adhesive -white glue PVA. When dried it was waterproof. Kids used it to make small canoes with newspaper! It worked. The current version called All Purpose has additives to shorten the open time, but is still too long for efficient work. The aircraft adhesive is best. There is an adhesive used to make the laminated wood propellers. Maybe the same?
There are a couple of glue options in use for aircraft which have to withstand extemes in temperatures, weather, fuel spills, etc. Of the options T-88 seems to be the most popular. There is footage online somewhere looking at old abandoned wooden aircraft and examining their condition in relation to the glue used. With that said, I'm not a glue expert which is why I'm trusting other wooden aircraft builders on this so I can direct my energy to other aspects. Like your anecdote on making canoes out of newsprint and pva! T-88 is used for laminating propellers (probably not the only option), another interesting part of the project for further down the track :-)
Slow but steady. As a kid I watched an inventor being interviewed, he was asked how he kept inventing so many things. His answer was quite long and went something like this; "Every morning I get up, have breakfast and read the paper. Eventually I wander into the shed. I look for a nut that needs tightening and I tighten it. Then I return to my paper and coffee. I do this every day." I think he appealed to my sense of humor, but the advice stuck :-) Funnily enough I typically get to the end of the week thinking I haven't made much or any progress, weirdly its the act of documenting it here that tells me otherwise.
Hi there - extraordinary project, highly appreciated. I was dreaming about flying a Fokker Triplane or a Sopwith Camel back when I was a young boy roaming the fields in my hometown. Now, I might have missed the specific comment in one of Your videos, but could you explain as to why you need screws in the ribs in the first place? Are they not weakening the ribs / introducing failure points? Are You not concerned about failures in the ribs in later use? I think modern glue is pretty strong to provide all the strength you need. But of course, if the target is not actually flying the plane, but reproducing the exact manufacturing approach it is a whole different story.
Hi Joe, I shared the same day dreams as a lad :-) The answer to screws is "complicated". My intent is to follow the plans as faithfully as I can, however from the very first step there have had to be compromises and so far they have fallen into three broad categories; availability of materials, length of service and safety. For example, you can't purchase ply as made in 1917 and 2023/24 ply has limited options. Old school glues don't last, but when the life of an aeroplane was measured in weeks or months, that didn't mater. Screws in the cap strips are part of the design. My working theory is that glues at the time weren't great and mechanical fixing helped despite the compromises. Using screws is also the only way to allow combat repairs on these aircraft. Replacing a damaged rib in the middle of the wing has to be practical. For the Camel ribs are not glued to the spars, they are held in place by side supports and screwing through the capstrip over & under the spar. I share your concerns around the practice, but also found reference to the practice of testing the design of ribs and it sounded like an ideal way to test the design, my workmanship and the use of modern materials. My guess is these should pass, but the ribs do look really flimsy, The first three should fail, being made from rejected parts, but I will learn from those before making my "good" ribs.
@@MattProject hi there, thanks for the full picture and taking the time to elaborate. I understand where you are going with this now. I would just note that in light aircraft, the loads on parts like ribs or control surfaces during flight are almost nothing in comparison to those introduced by handling on the ground. And I am pretty certain you don't plan on being shot at mid-flight... ;-) I also thought back to a couple of sailplanes we build during Uni. We did not use screws but were sewing a lot of the more delicate parts using a yarn that was impregnated in a solution of bees wax and linseed oil. Just a thought as a backup Take care and enjoy the build Joerg
I picked up a book a couple of months ago on building German style gliders, mostly for the references to working with wood on aircraft. I'm pretty sure it discusses that approach. A very interesting book if you are into wood working methods of the period. Also very interesting for seeing examples of the different approach used in Germany in aircraft construction. Workshop Practice for Building and Repairing Wooden Gliders; the English Translation of the German classic, Werkstattpraxis für den Bau von Gleitund Segelflugzeugen by Hans Jacobs and Herbert Lück.
i had my great-great-great-great uncle's plane in for a full restore when it came back for ww1 did have structural damage from he had crushed it a few times when he got injured for him it was normal to fight with it war was not going to wait to have your plane fided lol my understanding it was not the same wings the plane had when it was built fire destroyed the wings April i had it booked in the first for both hanger doors to be openly wanting to be there to see if it did have a video of the all and the moving of the bomber out of the bay into the other bay to the hanger did smell heavy with gasoline we got told they use it to clean the hanger doors 25 years the last time the back door was open 50 years for the front hanger door was opened up too did clean out fast when the door open did not want to have my vehicle broken into at the hockey game that night i put all my cameras in the biplane overnight i had paperwork to sign and throw to the machine gun that was to be restored to working storage they close the closes and locked them to most of us were at the hockey game got to call the hanger was goft inside with flames nothing was left inside or of the hanger too if he had never taken me up on the plane a short time after born i would not have cared about it 22 years after finding out why i was put on the plane to see all the property i would get on my 22 birthday i never saw that amount of money in my life before every send that somehow i turn i am getting more money too as to the plane like to find one like that one 2 are flyable and the 3thrd some are not and none is for sale the museum and the history site of the hanger still have not heard if it will be rebuilt at this time it's funny the next day the runway was being torn up to my guess the developer who owns the land had something to do with it too
Where in NZ are you based? You are gluing and screwing as they did but they didn't have modern glues in 1917. May I suggest you just glue with Titebond (cheaper and lighter and stronger than epoxy)or epoxy only. This will save on weight and the glue is stronger than the wood. You will be making stronger ribs than they had and without screws.
Marlborough. I agree on your observation on the adhesives. I have gone with T-88 as my preference in part because it is in common use, tried and tested for aircraft use. I could use something else but that adds to the list of things I need to test (keeping in mind the certification process to fly a homebuilt aircraft). Fortunately not a lot of glue is used in the Camel, it's mostly held together using wires :-)
@@MattProject Titebond make the best woodworking glues, PVA based, stronger than wood. They penetrate the wood whereas epoxy must be keyed in for a good bond.
Thanks, I will see if I can pick some up for my other projects. For this aircraft project I prefer to stick to the experience of wooden aircraft builders before me. I'm not the person to argue the benefits or otherwise of the consensus glue choices (there is more than one) for aircraft, but there is plenty of material online to look at. With that said I will look for Titebond at the local hardware store and give it a go on other projects :-)
Casein glue is made from the milk protein called, funnily enough, casein. You are thinking of hide glue. Old stuff you had to heat up but now you can get is as a liquid.
I’ve watched your 10 videos and enjoyed them all. What I took away is your a man of detail. And when your home building a airplane, you need detail. Those small issues if you don’t take care of while building could add up and come back at you in a not so good way. We wouldn’t want to see that. It’s fun watching you work out problems and solving them. Wish I lived closer I’d give you my THEIN dust separator
Thanks Bruce, I'm learning to be a detail person. I'm ok with working with wood, but generally stuck with carpentry, recognising that cabinetry is a whole different ball game regards tolerances. This project is more like engineering with much finer tolerances again except, unlike metals, wood changes dimension depending on the environment (temp & humidity), so a perfect measurement last August, is no longer so perfect (thinking those cap strips).
I haven't read your earlier comments yet, UA-cam threw this one up first :-)
New subscriber. I appreciate your dedication and willingness to make mistakes and learn from it. Few have that kind of patience. I look forward to seeing this progress!
Thanks for the support :-)
I’m a woodworker for hobby. I love anything that flies. I found you channel and I’m in Heaven. WW1. Aircraft I’ve loved since a child. Just started to follow you. CHEERS
Awesome, glad to have you along :-)
Rare video. As s young Woodworker who loved aviation I was asked by the Tucson air museum to help restore it's wood aircraft. I was mightily torn that I needed to work full time to survive instead. Their frailty in combat is still legendary and their pilots iron willed to take off each day in the face of almost certain death. 6 weeks was the average life span of s fighter pilot in WWl.
That would have been a great opportunity, I feel for you. We don't have those opportunities in NZ and to be fair, as a lad I wouldn't have been their first pick!
Another factor in that death rate was how rapidly the technology improved and swung the odds towards one side or the other. I'm reading "Bloody April" by Alan Morris at the moment. The Brits were flying pushers and had to support the latest Brit offensive. The Germans were equipping fighter squadrons, itself a new idea, with a single seat "puller" monoplane firing through the propeller. The Brits lost something like a third of their pilots in a month. Very interesting read, if a tad eye-opening!
@@MattProject Righto. I do remember a prominent Kiwi sheep baron dabled in historic aircraft and built a replica Polikarpov I-15. Perhaps it might be possible to inform us non-Kiwis about NZ aviation. I have many NZ DVDs of movies and TV series. None of them Lord of the Rings. A few of your actors are flying under the radar as does Karl Urban. Is there info on NZ pilots in both WWl and WWll? As a youngster I read all the WWl books I could find. The books and movies certainly censored all the nasty bits. You certainly are an ambitious bloke to tackle such a project. My cap off to you.
@@MattProject I have worked with all of the acrylic syrup resins. Your conclusion were correct, wood adhesive is far better. I would like to enter the discussion to suggest using the exterior water proof adhesive to cover water related occurrences. It's good to be dealing with fiber issues. Your subscribers are well concerned about your brave project. I'm in the desert area of Tucson where wood issues are more extreme due to very low moisture. Adhesive open time is very limited. I sometimes use the original PVA white glue for difficult gluing for more positioning time. I remember the introduction of the first synthetic wood adhesive -white glue PVA. When dried it was waterproof. Kids used it to make small canoes with newspaper! It worked. The current version called All Purpose has additives to shorten the open time, but is still too long for efficient work. The aircraft adhesive is best. There is an adhesive used to make the laminated wood propellers. Maybe the same?
There are a couple of glue options in use for aircraft which have to withstand extemes in temperatures, weather, fuel spills, etc. Of the options T-88 seems to be the most popular. There is footage online somewhere looking at old abandoned wooden aircraft and examining their condition in relation to the glue used. With that said, I'm not a glue expert which is why I'm trusting other wooden aircraft builders on this so I can direct my energy to other aspects.
Like your anecdote on making canoes out of newsprint and pva!
T-88 is used for laminating propellers (probably not the only option), another interesting part of the project for further down the track :-)
Not a plane person myself but love wooden stuff. Great work. I shall keep tuned in. All the best from the UK.
Thanks for the encouragement :-)
Enjoying the progression. Really interesting.
Slow but steady. As a kid I watched an inventor being interviewed, he was asked how he kept inventing so many things. His answer was quite long and went something like this;
"Every morning I get up, have breakfast and read the paper. Eventually I wander into the shed. I look for a nut that needs tightening and I tighten it. Then I return to my paper and coffee. I do this every day."
I think he appealed to my sense of humor, but the advice stuck :-) Funnily enough I typically get to the end of the week thinking I haven't made much or any progress, weirdly its the act of documenting it here that tells me otherwise.
Hi there - extraordinary project, highly appreciated. I was dreaming about flying a Fokker Triplane or a Sopwith Camel back when I was a young boy roaming the fields in my hometown.
Now, I might have missed the specific comment in one of Your videos, but could you explain as to why you need screws in the ribs in the first place? Are they not weakening the ribs / introducing failure points? Are You not concerned about failures in the ribs in later use? I think modern glue is pretty strong to provide all the strength you need. But of course, if the target is not actually flying the plane, but reproducing the exact manufacturing approach it is a whole different story.
Hi Joe, I shared the same day dreams as a lad :-) The answer to screws is "complicated". My intent is to follow the plans as faithfully as I can, however from the very first step there have had to be compromises and so far they have fallen into three broad categories; availability of materials, length of service and safety. For example, you can't purchase ply as made in 1917 and 2023/24 ply has limited options. Old school glues don't last, but when the life of an aeroplane was measured in weeks or months, that didn't mater.
Screws in the cap strips are part of the design. My working theory is that glues at the time weren't great and mechanical fixing helped despite the compromises. Using screws is also the only way to allow combat repairs on these aircraft. Replacing a damaged rib in the middle of the wing has to be practical. For the Camel ribs are not glued to the spars, they are held in place by side supports and screwing through the capstrip over & under the spar.
I share your concerns around the practice, but also found reference to the practice of testing the design of ribs and it sounded like an ideal way to test the design, my workmanship and the use of modern materials. My guess is these should pass, but the ribs do look really flimsy, The first three should fail, being made from rejected parts, but I will learn from those before making my "good" ribs.
@@MattProject hi there, thanks for the full picture and taking the time to elaborate. I understand where you are going with this now. I would just note that in light aircraft, the loads on parts like ribs or control surfaces during flight are almost nothing in comparison to those introduced by handling on the ground. And I am pretty certain you don't plan on being shot at mid-flight... ;-) I also thought back to a couple of sailplanes we build during Uni. We did not use screws but were sewing a lot of the more delicate parts using a yarn that was impregnated in a solution of bees wax and linseed oil. Just a thought as a backup
Take care and enjoy the build
Joerg
I picked up a book a couple of months ago on building German style gliders, mostly for the references to working with wood on aircraft. I'm pretty sure it discusses that approach. A very interesting book if you are into wood working methods of the period. Also very interesting for seeing examples of the different approach used in Germany in aircraft construction.
Workshop Practice for Building and Repairing Wooden Gliders; the English Translation of the German classic, Werkstattpraxis für den Bau von Gleitund Segelflugzeugen by Hans Jacobs and Herbert Lück.
i had my great-great-great-great uncle's plane in for a full restore when it came back for ww1 did have structural damage from he had crushed it a few times when he got injured for him it was normal to fight with it war was not going to wait to have your plane fided lol my understanding it was not the same wings the plane had when it was built fire destroyed the wings
April i had it booked in the first for both hanger doors to be openly wanting to be there to see if it did have a video of the all and the moving of the bomber out of the bay into the other bay to the hanger did smell heavy with gasoline we got told they use it to clean the hanger doors 25 years the last time the back door was open 50 years for the front hanger door was opened up too did clean out fast when the door open
did not want to have my vehicle broken into at the hockey game that night i put all my cameras in the biplane overnight i had paperwork to sign and throw to the machine gun that was to be restored to working storage they close the closes and locked them to most of us were at the hockey game got to call the hanger was goft inside with flames nothing was left inside or of the hanger too
if he had never taken me up on the plane a short time after born i would not have cared about it 22 years after finding out why i was put on the plane to see all the property i would get on my 22 birthday i never saw that amount of money in my life before every send that somehow i turn i am getting more money too
as to the plane like to find one like that one 2 are flyable and the 3thrd some are not and none is for sale the museum and the history site of the hanger still have not heard if it will be rebuilt at this time
it's funny the next day the runway was being torn up to my guess the developer who owns the land had something to do with it too
Where in NZ are you based?
You are gluing and screwing as they did but they didn't have modern glues in 1917. May I suggest you just glue with Titebond (cheaper and lighter and stronger than epoxy)or epoxy only. This will save on weight and the glue is stronger than the wood. You will be making stronger ribs than they had and without screws.
Marlborough. I agree on your observation on the adhesives. I have gone with T-88 as my preference in part because it is in common use, tried and tested for aircraft use. I could use something else but that adds to the list of things I need to test (keeping in mind the certification process to fly a homebuilt aircraft). Fortunately not a lot of glue is used in the Camel, it's mostly held together using wires :-)
@@MattProject Titebond make the best woodworking glues, PVA based, stronger than wood. They penetrate the wood whereas epoxy must be keyed in for a good bond.
Thanks, I will see if I can pick some up for my other projects. For this aircraft project I prefer to stick to the experience of wooden aircraft builders before me. I'm not the person to argue the benefits or otherwise of the consensus glue choices (there is more than one) for aircraft, but there is plenty of material online to look at. With that said I will look for Titebond at the local hardware store and give it a go on other projects :-)
Casein glue is made from the milk protein called, funnily enough, casein. You are thinking of hide glue. Old stuff you had to heat up but now you can get is as a liquid.
That proved to be an interesting diversion. I even found a recipe for home made casein glue :-) Cheers for that snippet!