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Barry:
You cannot compare what is done today in the light aircraft market with the construction of WW1 aircraft. First of all the light aircraft would not stand up to the rigours of Northern France and Belgium. In the Flanders region, I was told by a native, that it "rained 380 days a year!" Nor would your plywood gusseted fuselage survive a hundred landings on ill prepared very small airfields. These aircraft were fully aerobatic with no limitations. To directly answer your question, the light aircraft of today would not have passed the physical tests that WW1 aircraft were subjected to in design and developement.
There were two glues commonly used in WW1, casein and animal glue (Hooves), neither of which are half as good as any number of glues and cements we have today. I don't think an S.E.5a made today as you suggested would have stood up to combat operational stress of WW1 flying. The reason that the S.E.5a fuselage had a laced fuselage covering, was so the Ack-Emmas could gain access to the fuselage and retighten and true it up, periodically. I am sure you have a tailwheel on your aircraft with a leaf spring shock absorber? Try using a tail skid which transmits all the energy through bungee chord to the wood airframe of the rear fuselage. How about high pressure tires (80 lbs./sq.in.) to transmit the landing shock through forward fuselage while runnying over a rough airfield. The stress of vibrations of the engine, machine guns, the flying and landing wires @ 180 mph in a dive, an S.E.5a would do 200 mph in a dive. The structural flexing of the entire airframe in high speed manouevers. They were built tough to withstand combat, bad weather and lousy airfields. Every structural joint on the S.E.5a was universal! The engineers were not concerned about flying on warm Sunday afternoons off a smooth concrete runway and 1.5 to 2g turns.
Blue skies,
Dan-San
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