Hi Steve
Long time no see (from your WW1 Modelling page days)
Wing alignment and struts
Struts
Try bamboo - might be grass but looks like wood, it is rigid, stays straight, shapes well takes a really convincing wooden colour and look and it's as cheap as chips - Just use tooth picks or decent quality skewers that are straight !
Do you remember Robert Karr and his Gotha ? - Bob used bamboo for the struts with a wire core
Works really well and offers much greater strength than plastic or resin material
Method -
We will worry about getting an aerofoil shape later -
First - Use oversized material - It's much easier to sand down to shape than it is to begin with really small material that is close to the finished dimensions !
Next - Split the bamboo in half (or you can plane or sand down your round material to half way - a cabinet/ card scraper works well too )
You will need to create enough length to do a right and left hand side for each strut,
Using a "V" jig to hold the material ( see below) straight and true, razor saw a slot for the wire core length-ways into each half ( this slot should be placed toward the leading edge ! - A line cut into the material with a razor blade helps start the cut and keeps the saw true )
lay in your steel or brass wire and CA/ super glue the two halves back together leaving a bit of wire protruding at both ends to mount into the wings.
Now you can shape the strut,
use the protruding wires at each end as a guide . You want to keep the wire in the middle of the material and close to the leading edge. Don't overdo the sanding the back/ trailing edge or you can expose the wire
It's a bit of a fiddle - you need an opti-visor and a simple V jig to hold the strut so you can razor saw the slot, but it works pretty well and the resulting strut is really strong !
Method 2 - still uses bamboo but instead of a full wire core you just drill wire posts into each end of the strut.
Method 3 - Bamboo again but with a hole drilled length-ways through the strut - I have never attempted this one - If you could pull it off it would be the easiest and strongest way to go, but keeping a fine drill bit steady and true over just 1 - 1.2 " is quite an achievement, even if you do drill into the middle of the strut from both ends ...
The V jig is just a small block of wood around the same size of 12" wooden school kids ruler with a shallow V cut or sanded into it length-ways. This will allow you to hold your material straight and steady while you plane or sand it down and cut the slot.
To cut the V rule a line down the middle of this jig
With a steel ruler and razor blade cut along the centre line at 90 degrees to a depth of around 1 mm
Next move the steel ruler left or right to centre about 1.3 mm and cut again, but this time at 45 degrees back into the centre cut -
do the same on the other side of the centre line cutting back into the centre line
Now remove the waste material you have just freed up to create a very shallow V shaped groove
Use a block of wood with sand paper wrapped around the edge to refine the shape of the groove - Don't over do it The groove should not need to be deep
Bon chance mon brave !
David