Scratch Build Time

[alan0043]

Hi Everyone,

I was curious to know how much time in hours do you put into a scratch build plane. Starting with printing out the plans and moving forward. I have been working on a simple scout. I am surprised how much time I have in my plane. That's when I started getting curious to know, how much time to other people put into there plane. I also understand the design will have a big influence in how much time.

Thanks guys for any input,
Al

 

[FDS]

Everyone builds at different rates, some people can do them really fast, others are slower.
The beauty of it is there’s no right or wrong way to do it, you build at your own pace. Don’t stress if it’s taking a while, enjoy the build process.

 

[jross]

My spear, a 4 board plane, took me about 9.5 hours in total. An hour to print and tape up plans. 2.5 hours to cut out, 2 hours to tape parts pre-assembly, 2 hours to assemble parts, 2 hours for electronics.

My arrow, a 2 board plane, took about 4.5 hours.

I get faster with each plane as I figure out little tricks. The cut out and taping seem to be the most time consuming for me. Haven't tried painting yet but imagine that adds to the build time.

 

[Hai-Lee]

Another difficult question! Currently I am working on the answer to a similar question that was posed a long time ago and when I figure out the answer to the first question I will consider answering this question!

The first question is/was, "How long is a piece of string?". I have been contemplating that question for many many years now and still the answer seems to elude me!

Have fun!

 

[The Hangar]

My spear, a 4 board plane, took me about 9.5 hours in total. An hour to print and tape up plans. 2.5 hours to cut out, 2 hours to tape parts pre-assembly, 2 hours to assemble parts, 2 hours for electronics.

My arrow, a 2 board plane, took about 4.5 hours.

I get faster with each plane as I figure out little tricks. The cut out and taping seem to be the most time consuming for me. Haven't tried painting yet but imagine that adds to the build time.

Painting is a lot of fun and really takes as much time as you want it too. For my spitfire, I only Coates it with a can of brown spray paint, which didn’t take very long. I the other hand, some of my custom paint jobs take many many hours spread over weeks, involving a lot of masking...

 

[Flyer Sean]

We recently did 2 wings from scratch in about 5 hours. It was myself and a friend that had not built a wing but is an avid quad builder.
We were working at a local makerspace and we spent about an hour messing with my plans trying to get them into the laser cutter. We decided it wasn't worth it for such a simple cut out.
The wings were my own design a 30in span snub nose.
I also drew up and printed the motor mounts that day.
This is one of the wings.