wood for blades?

[nick02]

I am Finally starting on my blades for my genny. it is going to be a 6 foot with three 3 foot blades. I went out to the antique store and found a 9"drawknife and a penncraft plane they where Both $30.00 total.

I also bought some wood chisels and I have a rough idea from the otherpower site on how to make the blades.

My question is which type of wood should I use? and what thickness and with should the wood be?

[Shadow]

Hi, I'm in the process of building my second set, I've used spruce both times, my theory is go cheap til you learn then move on to more expensive wood. I got 16 foot rough 2 inch by 8 inch for 13.80 Canadian. That gets me 3 five foot blades.This time I got an electric planer, big help. Hardest part is still the cut down the center, need a big bandsaw for that. I use a handsaw, works ok just alot of work. Good luck, I'm sure you'll do fine.

[hiker]

i use what ever kind of wood they sell at lowes--last one was a 6by2 7.5' blade..works great--and has survied some high rpms........

[JB]

i like basswood. it carves like butter  but ive also used  2 by 4s also. I would experiment on some scrap first. JB

[picmacmillan]

one thing i would suggest is a sawzall, it makes easy work of cutting the pitch etc...just draw your lines and make a series of cuts, then chisel  out the stuff you dont want...then plane it...remember to make the blade 1/8th inch as thick as it is wide..for instance where the blade is 4" wide, it should be .5 ro (1/2") thick.   4"x1/8"=.5"

  any type of wood is good but try not to use wood with knots if possible....should be minimum 1 1/2" thick and 6 to 8" wide...i bleieve you said you are making 6" blades....do like was suggested at the top and buy a long board and cut it in half to get your desired length..good luck..pickster

[daleh007]

For what it's worth, I too have been working/experimenting on wooden blades for the last several months. Several things I have noticed are that most wood you can buy at reasonable prices (Doug Fir here) is green or very wet. Even after a couple of months of drying the blades carved from this wet wood warped quite a bit unfortunately, in the wrong direction. In an attempt to remedy this problem I have cut 2x6's and 2x8's into 1 1/2" square pieces and glued them together using polyurethane glue. Lately, I have purchased some kiln dried 1 1/2" square firing that I glued together and carved out last weekend. Seems to work much better and the wood is also noticeably lighter due to the reduced water content. MMM... I wonder what happens to that trapped moisture if you try to seal the blades. Anyway, you might consider laminating since you can control grain orientation, width requirements, and warpage.

Daleh007

[Experimental]

Dale, and others,

    A trick we used on aircraft blades, was to put one small pinhole at the tip of each blade, so trapped water can be expelled -- this was drilled, after the blade was painted or, better yet, coated with epoxy resin (West systems, #105)

   This can be polished to a glass like finish, and has UV protection..Bill, H.