Can you do it?

[old man emu]

2 minutes ago, facthunter said:

It Probably means the rest is wood.

Definitely wood control surfaces and wing. The problem is to determine what aerofoil design he used. I've seen one of the blueprints. It was in good condition - better than the image posted earlier in this thread. Who knows what I will find amongst those drawings. I hope that as I go through his notebooks I will find more of his research material. From what I've seen of his trade student notes, there's some good shit amongst it that has probably been forgotten over the years. If nothing else, I can resurrect that info.

[facthunter]

It will probably be one of a small range of NACA airfoil shapes. A lot of people would be able to identify it from the blueprints but it's most likely mentioned somewhere in the plans. Nev

[onetrack]

Unfortunately, there has been a lot of clever woodworking skills that have died with the people carrying them. It never ceases to amaze me what they achieved in the "old days" with such very basic materials and methods. There would have been people who could pick up the flaws in a length of timber that others couldn't, simply by long experience and a sharp eye.

[facthunter]

Like FELLING shakes where the piece would fail under load.  Lots of designers don't like working in wood for it's lack of consistency. Use test pieces and keep them and be conservative with the stress figures.   Nev

[Blueadventures]

5 minutes ago, onetrack said:

Unfortunately, there has been a lot of clever woodworking skills that have died with the people carrying them. It never ceases to amaze me what they achieved in the "old days" with such very basic materials and methods. There would have been people who could pick up the flaws in a length of timber that others couldn't, simply by long experience and a sharp eye.

And for boat building you need the slow growing conditions for the timber type.  Most areas where the type grew well is not available for harvest.  Now some areas grow the species but in the lower coastal faster growing region and the quality is nowhere near what's required.  

[facthunter]

Slow growing and knot free. No lightning strikes either. The number of growth rings /inch of the cross section will tell you how fast it has been growing. The growth is usually a bit faster (wider spaced growth rings) on the side facing the equator. Quarter sawn timber is best and wholly of truewood .(Mature) Darker colour and more dense.  the outer stuff is Sapwood.. Nev

[turboplanner]

2 hours ago, old man emu said:

 what I will find amongst those drawings. 

Where the drawing is blurred right where you need a dimension etc, you can go to a Plan Printer, and have the section enlarged and if that doesn't work you can use the bluepring as a negative and print to postive which will show blurred black figures on white, then scan that into an AI photo app, usually free with genealogy software which sharpen up a face to HD standard.

[old man emu]

Dealing with the plans themselves won't be a problem. The problem will be the extent of their coverage. Interestingly, there are sheets also for his first plane, and for the Avro Avian. Since he worked on the Avro 504 and Avian, as part of his day job I wonder if, he could have used those designs for aerofoil shape.

 

I was only skimming through the material to get an impression of what was available, but I did find an entry in a notebook that identified Australian timbers for various components. So maybe the plane won't need to be spruced-up!