Hand Carved Wooden Props

[ondra]

Hi all,

first of all many thanks to Lance and Lone Modeller for the great tutorials in this thread.

Please let me add my two cent for small scales. As I only work in 1/144 which is too small for using wood, I carve my propellers from a sandwich of laminated red and white plastic:



The advantage of plastic is that it can be sanded to 0,1 mm thickness and can be welded together with Extra Thin or similar glue.

And this is what the result looks like with woodgrain made by applying a thin coat or red ochre oil paint:



Cheers

Ondra

[lcarroll]

    Thanks for adding to this Ondra, we've now got the entire spectrum of scales pretty well covered! I never cease to be amazed at what you do in such a small scale!
Cheers,
Lance

[Borsos]

    Thanks for adding to this Ondra, we've now got the entire spectrum of scales pretty well covered! I never cease to be amazed at what you do in such a small scale!
Cheers,
Lance

I absolutely agree.
Borsos

[lone modeller]

I thought making props in 1/72 scale was about the limit - Ondra you have demonstrated just what can be done. Thanks for your contribution - and that is a beautiful prop both in shape and colour.

Stephen.

[ondra]

Hi Warren,

I can share some of my red plastic stock with you. It will not be a lot but should be enough material for about 10 propellers in 1/72. PM me if you are interested.

Btw. I have not succeeded either to find a proper source of thin red plastic, therefore the basic material is 1mm thick red styrene (from a warning shield "no trespassing" from local hobby store).

I made a simple jig allowing me to sand the material down to 0,1 mm thickness - two strips of 0,1 mm brass glued alongside each other in 5 mm distance on a plastic sheet. Then I cut a strip of red plastic 5 mm wide, glue it in between the two brass strips with CA (only two small drops of CA just to keep the part in place) and then sand it down with a flat file.

Is actually faster than it might look.

Cheers

Ondra

[Bughunter]

Long time nothing written here, but I like to give some comments.

I tried plywood too but do not get good results for a simple reason:
One layer is lengthwise, but the other has the wood grain across!
On wooden airscrews all the grain is in the lengthwise direction, but it do not make no sense, to produce such plywood.
=> so we have to make our own.

The second problem is the wood grain. We need in this scale very fine or better no grain, water channels and so on. So only some wood kinds are really usable. I still experimenting, but the best seems to be pear, boxwood and in general fruit threes, like cherry. Here I had some discussions with model ship builders, which helped a lot.

Some examples:




Pear and Boxwood for a AXIAL:






Here I tried Canadian maple and sycamore, with acrylic brown in the wood glue. It shows more grain.


And even a four blade is possible, here for my D.H.2 Stripdown with two different pear veneers:




Raw shaping


And on the model:


Here one of mine on a picture of the Windsock Airscrew Special, the sentence with the skill is really true


Hope it helps!
Cheers,
Frank

[lcarroll]

Frank,
    What you say about suitable wood stock is so very true! I have a large sample package of veneer strips I use for laminating my own stock and I find only 3 or 4 of the more then 20 types in the package are suitable, most grains are too "open".  The plywood grain direction is a factor as well, I have some stock remaining of 1/8 and slightly thicker 4 and 5 ply stock that is all in parallel direction and it works well but I cant locate any more. It was sourced at a hobby shop about 20 years ago, made for parts of flying models.
    I very much admire the props you've done here; having made my own since starting a 1/32 Scale collection I am too aware of the time and effort they take. Not hard to do, but slow work!
    Thanks for adding to this thread.
Cheers,
Lance

[Pgtaylorart]

Thanks for the great tutorials on prop making, Lance. Your props look amazing! I have a question: for the 1/32 props, what thickness is the veneer and where do you get it? Is it something you have to cut and plane down yourself? Or are they purchased at the proper thickness?

Thanks for any help!
George

[lcarroll]

George,
    The product I use is from a company called Sauers & Company:

http://sveneers.com/

   It's a package of 20 SQ Ft. of mixed variety veneers of 1/32 of an inch to roughly 1/16 of an inch thick. 12 inch lengths and 5.5 to 7.5 inches wide. About roughly 1/4 of the stock is suitable. I bought it from Lee Valley Tools 4-5 years ago for $28 Canadian. Here's the American stores link:

https://www.leevalley.com/

    When I need more I'll try for small amounts of the species I really want, like the "Pear" and some darker close grained stuff that Frank has mentioned.
Let me know how you make out on your search, always a better idea out there waiting to be used! Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Lance

[Bughunter]

George, the thickness depends on your original prop.
Measure the thickness of the plastic prop or take it from a drawing of your aircraft in the right scale.
Review pictures and try to count or guess the number of used layers. It really depends on the aircraft, typical are 6 to 8 but I have seen also only 4 layers.
measured thickness / number of layers = the needed veneer thickness

For the wood I would check ebay or google for wood veneer manufacturer in your country. Some sell also small examples.

Cheers,
Bughunter

[Pgtaylorart]

Thank you, Lance and Bughunter for your replies. Very helpful!!

George

[Matt]

Hi

I have ahd a crack at carving a wooden prop from veneer



This was my first attempt and I thought it pretty decent... however, the grain is to apparent and it looks nice but not realistic..

Just recently over on Large Scale Planes I saw a little feature on creating 'wooden' props using coloured paper. Sounded a little unlikely, but (obvious my view) I think this chap has created extremely realistic lamination, using a material which is totally accessible and cheap as chips.  Apols if this has been shown elsewhere on the forum...

http://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?showtopic=68531

Matt

[lcarroll]

   Some good food for thought there Matt, I would never have thought of trying this! My first thoughts are that the hardened paper would be a lot harder to carve then wood however you certainly can't argue with the results...... very nice! I may have to play around with this idea a bit, thanks for the post!
Cheers,
Lance

[Matt]

Lance

I suspect as with any situation where CA is used as a filler/hardener, you'll need to get cracking at carving/sanding quite quickly, before the CA gets to maximum cure....

Matt

[lcarroll]

Matt,
    Much the same effect as when using CA as a filler, sanding/shaping can be a delicate operation. I wonder if Carpenters white wood glue wouldn't work? We have a Paper Kit Modeller in our Club who uses it to stiffen up delicate parts......
Cheers,
Lance