Advice needed: scratch built wings.

[puddingwrestler]

I've had an idea for a plane inspired by some pis of flying wings on Drawn Patrol. What I need to know is the best way to build the wing for a 1930s style flying wing thing. I figure there are two main ways - build a skeleton out of plasticard or blasa and wrap plasticard around it or carve from solid balsa. I'm inclined to the later option because I'm not great at the former (I tried it before). What I want to know is what do I used to treat the balsa after it is in the right shape. In the past I used tamiya contour putty (on the floats of the Black Scarab Fighter MK.III) but that was on a small area. Should I use a Bog type fibreglass auto putty or what?
I need to be able to scribe detail into the wings after, so should I carve the shape, then cover it with plasticard? I think I'd be able to get that to work much better than building straight from plasticard...

Any ideas?

[jcf]

Harry Woodman's Bible:
http://www.wwi-n-plastic.com/Book/harry/contents.htm

The sections on wings:
http://www.wwi-n-plastic.com/Book/harry/chapter3/09-wings.htm
http://www.wwi-n-plastic.com/Book/harry/chapter3/10-wingtips.htm

In a nutshell: Form from plastic card, and wrap around a wood core.

When carving directly from wood, bass-wood (or jelutong) is often preferable to balsa
and the surface should be sealed. Commercial wood filler/sealer products (available in
hardware or paint stores) can be used, myself, I prefer to use a spit-coat of shellac followed
with a coat of regular 3 or 5 pound cut shellac.

The old-school solid-model guys are good to talk to for techniques:
http://smm.solidmodelmemories.net/Gallery/

[puddingwrestler]

The first three links give me a '403: Forbidden' error...

[philp]

They open fine for me Owen.  Try them again.

[jcf]

Try this:

http://www.wwi-n-plastic.com/Book/harry/woodman.html

[puddingwrestler]

Every page on there comes up with this:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /Book/harry/woodman.html on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

I'll try to access from school tomorow... might not like my IP or something.

[TallEng]

I seem to remember when the late Alan Hall used Balsa wood on his conversions in Airfix magazine years ago, he used ordinary Talcum power and Varnish!!

[jcf]

I seem to remember when the late Alan Hall used Balsa wood on his conversions in Airfix magazine years ago, he used ordinary Talcum power and Varnish!!

Which is basically the composition of commercial wood filler/sealer products.

[puddingwrestler]

The links work over my school internet connection. Good thing term just started again eh?

[chrisonord]

You can get hold of some stuff called sanding sealer, I have used it when I used to build R/C boats, it stops paint from soaking into the wood and leaving it all blotchy too. Could you not just do the panel lines with an engineers pencil?
Cheers,
Chris.

[The Wooksta!]

Repeated coats of autospray primer or clear lacqquer and sanding do the trick too.  You should be able to scribe panel lines into it.