This build report was assumed as finished, but ...
During stow away I looked again into the Windsock Datafile - the pictures of the
Sopwith Schneider, the famous float plane, are very nice too! There is also a second Datafile 60 about Sopwith Baby, which contains also drawings of the Schneider including floats.
And yesterday morning there we had snow chaos on the streets. After long time on the street without progress, I turned and was 7 minutes later back at home to call the boss - take a day off for modeling!
Since I was still in the "scratch" mode since the Nieuport cowling on weekend and I wanted to to something with wood I started to create ...
FloatsCut stripes of plywood. 3 of them are thick enough for one float. At first glued two, drilled bling holes to be filled up with a bad alloy of solder. I want to avoid tail sitter!
After gluing the last stripe the lead is no more visible. With my small Proxxon disc sander the floats reaches the final form within seconds.
The sides are also slightly sanded to reach nearly the needed width. After that it was planked with my nice pear wood.
After the dry glue a sanded the veneer carefully to reach the contour.
For the up and down layer I had to bend the veneer with steam and glue it to the floats.
The beading was intended and mentioned the the Datafile drawing. I have to reduce the thickness further and sand the beading to the final size.
After primer and clear varnish it will hopefully looks like spar varnish!
Source:www.ctie.monash.edu.au
I really like the outcome! No, I will not replace the undercarriage of the Lebed. One day I want to build a Sopwith Schneider (or Baby) with the 100hp engine on this floats. I do not want to start a new build report now, but it matches this aircraft and kit very closely. And with a idea in my head sometimes I need to check immediately if it works or not
Cheers,
Frank
