What I did in March

[Capt Slog]

this is the March part of my New Years Resolution to try to get something done each month this year.

I finally bit the bullet and decided to make some real blades (sorry other PVC users).

First off, a vist to the wood yard where I bought a piece of pine with as few knots in it as possible, but more importantly, a piece where I could get three lengths out between the knots.  £ 3.40 got me a decent lump of 2 x 4 planed which was 2.4m long

I've got a copy of Ed Lenz's blade design program and put the number in for blades 25" long and asked it for 10 stations. Because this is the first time I've done this, I found the numbers and what they refered to slightly baffling to start with and had visions of spending several hours in the shed wasting perfectly good timber.

But, nothing ventured nothing gained, so I gave it a go.  I've never been very confident in making precision stuff in wood, I lost the knack very soon after started working with metal in my school days.  I think it's something to do with how easy it is to remove so much wood in one mistake!

After a few hours of cutting and chieling (blimey, doesn't it find muscles you didn't know about?) and a lot of sanding I've ended up with three blades I'm quite pleased with..

This is the first bit of carving I've done since I made myself an electric guitar at 16 (one day I'll learn to play it).

One of the trikiest bits I found was cutting the angles on the blade roots so that they fitted together nicely, I did it in the end but you can't see it under the plate here

I've made the blades a bit wider near the root by glueing on what I'd removed at the tip.

[DamonHD]

Neat!

But I have to warn you: another month crept up on us while you were carving!  B^>

Rgds

Damon

[Capt Slog]

Yup, and this months will be reported at the beginning of May, in the same way that I could hardly be expected to have completed a months project on January the First  :-)

I forgot to mention.........

the blades are supposed to be tsr 6.5

the whole set as seen with the plate weighs around 1.6kilo which is around 0.6 more than the pvc set but all the extra weigh is concentrated at the centre.

[97fishmt]

Nicely done!!  You are officially hooked now.

You will love the way they perform and it gets

easier and easier.  Now you will be hunting nice

wood on outings, new tools, on and on. Way to go!!

[blueyonder]

 WELL DONE .    sharp tools are great .but a sharp mind is better.

   it looks like you bit the bullet very well.

  i have only carved one set blades 6ft.   but i wasent looking farward to doing it.

  i started with four bits and found a split in one.

   i thought it will all end up as just a odd looking prop that wont be any good.

  but when i finished it looked so much better than i expected .

    the blades are finished now and work very well.

   the balancing and testing was great fun.

   only thing that dident come out good was the tracking .

  two blades were spot on. and the other was out 5/16".

   but i could do nothing about it as i glued and screwed the round discs on.

  i spent ages getting the balancing right.  also enjoyed doing it.

    tracking was sumthing i thought about afterwards.

   i dident think i had it in me to be able to make a wind rotor from wood.

   so it was a great feeling to watch the blades spin so fast in the wind.

    working with wood isent sumthing i thought i will find on the otherpower forum.

    but it all here .  your blades look great captain.

      nice to see a few pics of your work.

[blueyonder]

 hi captain slog again . i just saw the blades are left handed.

   did you do that for a reason?

[Capt Slog]

No, no reason, it was just how I picked up the wood and drew the dimensions onto it; lucky I suppose that I did it the same for all of them!  

It really makes no difference to my mill, it's all roller bearings inside the hub and there's very little chance of the fixng bolt coming undone by the action of it spinning.

The rotors sit either side of that thick aluminium separator, and the black tube bit contains two double race bearings.  The blades mount onto the black tube, hence the big hole it the centre.

[elvin1949]

Capt

 NICE work.When they are flying some pic's please.

later

Elvin