Built Up Wooden Ribs...,

[Don Boose]

Shrike: ". . . and the glue might smell better."

Ah yes! The aromas of nitrate dope, banana oil, lacquer thinner, and Ambroid (or Testors or Duco, with a nod to GB).

Not as healthy as odorless white glue, but even the thought brings back memories of building stick and tissue models and listening to the Harley Jazz Hour on summer nights in Baltimore in the 50s -- with the occasional drone of reciprocating engines overhead.

Don

[shrike]

Actually I was thinking of Resorcinal , West System epoxies and the Ceconite pink stuff....

[Don Boose]

Hmmmmm. Showing my age.

Don

[dansls1]

I never got into any 'big' stick and tissue models - so I did lots of Elmer's, water spritzing and the occasional use of rubbing alcohol. Luckily that's all I needed for the rubber band powered stuff I built

[shrike]

S'ok Don, last "stick and tissue" work I did was 1:1 scale, Ambroid and banana oil wasn't gonna cut it<G> Not even gonna go into filmstock dissolved in acetone, or the proper way to split a double-edged razor blade

[whulsey]

Wow filmstock dissolved in acetone, haven't heard that one in a long time.

[Don Boose]

I'm old. But I'm not THAT old.

However, a lot of the magazines and books that were on my shelf in the 50s (and are still there today) included plans and articles with info on making glue from film dissolved in acetone and with much use of split bamboo for curved parts (and for railings and guns and other tubular structures for the Ideal ship models with the pressed pulpwood hulls). My earliest memories of stick and tissue models are of those my older cousin built with formers cut out of cardboard because balsa was a strategic material.

Don

[Leif Ohlsson]

Gil, just a quickie to say how much I appreciated the original idea. At first I thought you created a whole "stock" of rib sectons with internal "corrugation", and then sliced them into ribs, like a loaf of bread.

That seemed booth ingenious & very hard to accomplish.

Now I see that you can apply that idea to the separate parts of the ribs. In my mind I envisage sections of the ribs to be made out of folded paper, which then can be sliced into stripes (with folds included).

Then the thin slices can be assembled into ribs, more or less like you did, but hopefully without the pins.

This is really difficult to describe in words, but I hope to be back rather soon to show you how I envisage your original idea - at least on paper.

Leif

PS. Don, I always had a soft spot for the dissolved film & substitute material era. That was wartime, of course, no balsa available. Although before my time, that kind of models survived long enough after the war to appear when I was young. I remember such a kit as absolutely hopeless at the age I was at the time. To much hardwood for me to be able to handle.

That's why I remember so fondly my first real balsa models; how soft and easy that material was, and how good the glue smelled at that time.

Nowadays, I'm still a sucker for my wife polishing her nails. That smell still takes me right back.

[Gil]

Hi Lief,

Your explanation describes the method.

The Ribs are sliced off from a sheet that's been previously scribed and folded. The pins are only to hold this zig-zag piece in position while the airfoil surround laminate is glued in place. The only trick is the scribing method which uses a scribed trough in a plexiglass panel to back the stock as it is being scribed with a spherical embossing tool. It makes a very neat "corner" type of fold in the paper.

+Gil

[Leif Ohlsson]

OK! This is how I envisaged what you were doing. A great help it was, your idea!

(I'm having some fun with it here, over at Kartonbau.de - all in English!).

Leif