it is interesting what you discover about alternate woods.

wright1902glider wrote:
On May 5, 9:05 pm, wrote:

On May 5, 7:58 am, Stealth Pilot
wrote:

Dont knock some of those alternative timbers. Some mean that the
drying up of spruce is an artifact of history, not the end of timber
aircraft.


If you follow the spruce specs back far enough, you eventually run
into "Them Wright Boys", and beyond that, Octave Chanute. I think the
reason they went with spruce back in the day was because it had the
highest strength-to-weight properties and it was available in the
local lumberyards in lengths exceeding 16 feet. Keeping in mind that
both Chanute and the Wrights were using eastern species of spruce,
what they referred to as "West Virginia Silver Spruce." Exactly which
species that is, I dunno. But its what they could get, it was light,
and it worked better than the alternatives like southern yellow pine.
A quick look back at the Wrights' notebooks tells us that thier 1904
machine was originally pine, but had a nasty habbit of shattering
parts when it crashed, uh, I mean landed. Broken parts were eventually
replaced with spruce.

Truth is that lots of things will work for building an airplane. Some
better than others. By what degree is often the determining factor.
But as resources deminish, alternatives look better.

Harry


What was it you used on your Flyer, Harry?

Richard
--
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Now just why the HELL do I have to press 1 for English?
John Wayne

On May 7, 12:21*pm, cavelamb himself wrote:

What was it you used on your Flyer, Harry?

Richard


I used sitka spruce for most of it because that's the closest that I
could find to the Chanute specs and it was my best guess for an
alternate. Keeping in mind of course that only about 1/2 of a Wright
glider was spruce. The other 1/2 was white ash. Just about any part
with a bend in it - ribs, landing skids, wingtip bows, canard leading
& trailing edges, were either steam-bent ash, or were laminated from
ash. By the way, steam-bending is 90 times harder than it looks and
127 times more time-consuming.

Supposedly, Ken Hyde of "The Wright Experience" actually used West
Virginia silver spruce for his machines. Theyway I heard it, and this
is NOT a verified fact, he found someone with a tree, had it cut &
milled, etc. His wood did look a little different from mine, but that
have been from the finish his people used. "The Wright Experience" was
funded by Ford (yeah, that Ford), several other major corps., and
Harry Combs. SUPER DEEP pockets folks. They spent millions building
what cost me a few thousand.

Admittedly, I did have to interpret a few parts and materials for my
machine just because the original materials weren't available for less
than millions, or there simply wasn't any info. available for a
particular part. But I can document my plane to 95% accuracy.

Harry

Try this, don't know if it's what your looking for or not.

http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fp...tr113/ch04.pdf

Lou

wright1902glider wrote:

Supposedly, Ken Hyde of "The Wright Experience" actually used West
Virginia silver spruce for his machines. Theyway I heard it, and this
is NOT a verified fact, he found someone with a tree, had it cut &
milled, etc. His wood did look a little different from mine, but that
have been from the finish his people used. "The Wright Experience" was
funded by Ford (yeah, that Ford), several other major corps., and
Harry Combs. SUPER DEEP pockets folks. They spent millions building
what cost me a few thousand.

They are building (built) everything from the kites to the 1911 model B and
then actually fly them:
http://ns97.webmasters.com/*wrightex...sion/index.htm