Adam's Sopwith Pup

3/1/08 6:00

Finished routing all 200 feet of capstrip and my arms are aching from using new muscles! Went pretty well, I was unhappy with perhaps 10 feet. It is interesting to compare the qualities of the different pieces of spruce... the tight-grained strips are very easy to work and I had no problems with them; much more trouble with pieces where the grain was space farther apart, the router was sometimes ripping the wood rather than cutting it cleanly. My attention now turns to the plywood webs. I made a plywood pattern for the nose web and used it to rout out a trial piece... came out OK. I am worrying a bit about how perfect and precise I need to be, not that that's a bad thing. It's helpful to go in the Museum and look at the uncovered aeroplanes (it's really helpful to look at the Curtiss Jenny), other examples of wing ribs in displays, etc to "calibrate" myself on what are acceptable standards.