Thanks Ken and Early Bird Fan, I very much appreciate your interest and kindness!
Not a great deal to report, the weather has been glorious in the UK so rather than sit in the man cave I have been in the garden having a few mammoth whittling sessions. Although I have a stunning wooden prop from Alex at Proper Plane I just fancied being outdoors.
For the first prop I went old school and taped the kit prop to a blank, drew round it and carved. I was in a hurry with this one so used CA glue to glue the veneers together.
For the next two I scanned the kit prop and used my cutting machine make the profile and glued with proper wood glue. These carved much better!
20200601_224018 by
Richard Williams, on Flickr
I used wood stain to darken the props before coating in suoer thin CA glue and buffing with a finger nail polisher. I got the idea for coating with CA from Rodgers guitar machine heads which are the finest you can buy. The finish on them is amazing!
Triplane Props by
Richard Williams, on Flickr
As you can see the results are variable, I like the shape of the top one but I drilled the hole for the prop shaft off centre and it is a bit undersized.
The second was made with all one kind of veneer but I seem to have been on the rum and made one blade much smaller than the other, not sure how that happened!
The bottom one I like, it's nowhere near the level of the one from Proper Plane but it's my own work and as I made all the markings myself I may as well use my home made prop too.
The next step is to see if I can scratch a boss for it, I have a nice resin one if what I produce is horrible!
Thanks for reading, happy modelling everybody
Richie