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Stick
&Ttissue |
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| Lighten
That Kit Wood! |
A lot of kits on the shelves of your local hobby shop would be great
buys if it weren’t for the incredibly heavy wood they come with!
For instance, I love all those old Guillows designs and the nice scale
canopies in their kits. But I’d never waste my time building
with the wood as provided... I want my models to fly.
Well
here’s an easy way to lighten the wood in those kits and make
them into better flyers!
By sanding the sheetwood down to a smaller thickness you can shed
up to 50% of the weight. The illustration shows how a sanding block
is used to thin the wood, with two pieces of music wire used as “stops.”
You just keep sanding until no more wood is coming off. The only challenge
to this is judging how thin to make the wood, and then locating the
correct diameter of music wire.
As an example, let’s say we want to reduce some 1/16”
sheet to 75% of its original thickness. With a calculator we find
the following:
1/16” = 0.063”
75% of 0.063” = 0.047”
It just so happens that music wire is available in 0.047” diameter,
but it’s not necessary to be that precise. Just find the wire
that comes closest to the desired thickness. |
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©
2003 Small Flying Arts
All rights reserved
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