Foam/wood/paper built up wing

[Mac82]

Ok guys I have something for y'all.
I've been wanting to build my sopwith camel for a long time now. Today I started to do a little experiment with the wing construction wanting to keep it very light and some what scale looking.
I decided to mix some of my balsa building techniques with the dtfb/poster board techniques.





Now this is only a test but it is fairly rigged and very light
One thing I will change in the future will be, when I wrap the wing with the paper it will be in one piece (remember this was only a test)

Please let me know your thoughts on this design. good, bad and what I could do to improve the structure.
Thanks for stopping by

 

[RAM]

I hope you make two (ribbed and FT foam wing) and weight the difference. I though about doing this but then wondered if the additional hot glue needed for the ribs would offset any weight savings. If you don't need the speed of hot glue maybe elmers glue would work for this.

 

[Mac82]

Sure i can do that i already have a FT style wing that i was going to use in another project and once this one is done I'll weigh the difference. I may do another test using the elmers/ gorilla wood glue on another test section of wing for weight and strength testing as well. Another thing to remember, when i build the final product i will be adding the functional rigging so a lot of the wing strength will come from them.

 

[Mac82]

Okay folks here we go composite built up wing prototype V1.2



here i added some bracings in between the ribs and matched the hight of the alignment spat with the hight of the ribs and added little tails on the ribs so the trailing edge spar didn't just but up agents the ribs.




this time while i was assembling the wing i was much more conservative with the hot glue, to keep it clean and to keep the weight down





i wrapped the poster board around the wing, trimmed the excess and used packing tape around the trailing edge.






and finally gave it a light cote of spray paint on each side. To answer a question from an earlier post, the weight of the wing (a 12in /31cm section) before paint was a mere 1.47oz/41g after paint it weighed 1.6oz/ 45g. Now if my math is right, with aonther cote of paint (matte clear)and some decals a 20in/62cm wing section should be a little less than 7oz/198 grams. Again i am amazed in how rigid and light the wing is and I'm happy with how easy the construction is.
i will definitely be doing this on my up coming sopwith camel and neiuport 17 builds.

So long and thanks for all the fish.