cad drawings

Does anyone know if there are any CAD drawings available for the Woodstock plywood parts?

Earlier, Kevin Brooker:

Bad news first: I don't know.

Off topic: Until a few months ago, when I had a bunch of Masonite fuselage station templates CNC cut on a low-tech sign router rig, I would have thought that the words 'CAD' and 'plywood' don't ever belong in the same sentence...

On thinking of it, though, that might be great way to churn out Woodstock ribs.

Good news: There's a great place to ask that question - it's the HomeSail forum on YahooGroups. I think that if you register ask those guys, you might get some useful info.

Bob K.

Most of the big R/C kits are CNC cut from ply. Saw such kits being cut New Year's Day 1995 at the Model Engineering Exhibition in London. The rest is simply a matter of scale.

Frank Whiteley

I have seen many different ways to cut shapes, once a program is written, and have often thought, deep enough to estimate the price out from the pictures, that a Woodstock kit could probably be cut for around $800 once the programs are paid for. Bad part is that I have no idea what the programming would cost, except LOTS.

CNC routers are now somewhat on the 'almost obsolete' list, laser and hydrojet abrasive cutting are more common. Common enough that there are many small model kits available that are laser cut, down into HO scale, as well as some of the 'high buck' 1/4 scale planes. The precision of these parts is impressive, they fit much better than almost any other cutting method now commercially available. I often see the CNC routers in machine auctions, going for little more than scrap price, but always needing the spindles rebuilt, and 50000 to 100000 rpm bearings are not cheap.

Keven, Cutting out bulkheads and ribs with the recommended inverted saber saw doesn't take that long. The ribs are all *stack sawed*, two at a time, with the master disappearing as you work from root to tip. Lets say it takes a week (40 hours), that's less than 4% of the eatimated 1500 hours it's going to take to get her in the air. Don't sweat the small stuff. JJ Sinclair

Lets say it takes a week (40 > hours), that's less than 4% of the eatimated 1500 hours it's going to take to get her in the air. Don't sweat the small stuff.

JJ Sinclair

Exactly. I helped a guy named Duke Stallings make 56 ribs for a scratch-built metal glider back in the 1960's. We made the forms, cut the blank aluminum ribs and hydro-pressed them (using a rented machine) to final form in about two weeks. The hydropressing part took about 3 hours. Plywood ribs, using a band saw and bench disk sander go a lot faster than that. Of course if you insist on Pratt Truss ribs made of 1/4' spruce, you're in for a lot of work.

The real work in a homebuilt is the stuff you can't categorize, like a bazillion hours operating a sheet of sandpaper or fitting screws and bolts. Somebody with a lot more experience than me said that 90% of the work in the last 10% of the project.

One last point. You don't actually finish a homebuilt. You just get tired of working on it, complete the paperwork, and go fly. After that, it's just fiddle and fly.

Bill Daniels