Turnbuckles for German planes

wulffo · 23 October 2002, 08:40 AM

does anyone know how many of the spannschloesser (wire tighteners with two opposite threads) and of what sizes are needed for a fokker dvii. were these interchangeable between airplanes from different manufacturers.

wolfenbill · 25 October 2002, 02:11 PM

Wulffo, we call them turnbuckles in the US. I don't recall how many we've used in our Fokker D.VII but there were many. When I go to Kingsbury next weekend (Nov 2), I'll count them. I seem to remember that aircraft grade turnbuckles cost 6 or more dollars (about 6 Euros or more) each. The turnbuckles we used are not original Fokker products. They are interchangeable between aircraft and do come in various sizes.

wulffo · 28 October 2002, 01:55 AM

Thanks for the info...especially the bridging of the language barrier. I have purchased and will post (as soon as I have my camera connected) a number of turnbuckles of different sizes, all Idflieg stamped. These I want to use in a DVII rebuild with original parts (in so far as I can get them). Are there any original parts lists still in existence???

but more importantly is anyone interested in receiving exact photos and measures of these less glamorous parts???

29 October 2002, 04:05 AM

Wullfo and Wolfenbill

I will be checking on availability of a large stash of WWI era turnbuckles today. these are reported to be of various standard sizes used by the american aircraft industry 1916-20's. Modern equivalents available from Spruce and Specialty may not be that much different, but will check on that too. Anyone interested in a trade? I need original Austrian Albatros DIII plans.
charlie

wolfenbill · 29 October 2002, 07:08 AM

Photos and measurements would be great. I'd like to see if there are any major differences between early aviation German and American turnbuckles.

Charlie, you may want to check with Heinz Linner about those plans. We certainly don't have a full set of plans. To be honest I don't know what we have regarding the Albatros, German and/or Austrian.

wulffo · 18 November 2002, 03:02 AM

i have made the first picture of the various turnbuckles being used... but alas it is too large to post on the site.... please email me or post on the site if you are interested.... i will shortly follow up with detailed pictures of every single one including the stamps. during cleaning i discovered most of the middle pieces to be made of plated brass! which came as a bit of a suprise especially since most showed some wear just to this material.

wolfenbill · 18 November 2002, 05:00 AM

Attached is a black and white copy of a portion of wulffo's picture showing the German turnbuckles. Note their superior design in that the center section is hexagonal on cross-section so that they can be turned with a wrench. American turnbuckles are round on cross section. I counted the number of turn buckles that we've used on our Fokker D.VII. We have used 70 of them. The fuselage and wing turnbuckles are about 15 cm in length while the ones we used on the control wires are were about 17 to 18 cm. I'm not sure if we have accurate descriptions of the sizes used on the original aircraft.

wulffo · 18 November 2002, 05:06 AM

Thanks for that wolfenbill... hopefully i will be able to post the next ones myself.....

wolfenbill · 18 November 2002, 07:32 AM

All I did was take the photo you sent me, got rid of the color and then cropped it until it was less than 50k in size.

Marco_Sommerau · 18 November 2002, 07:44 AM

Wulfo,

Most of your turnbuckles are almost similar to WWI types, but I think they are in fact from the WWII period. Enclosed I post a photo showing the (little) differences: top is a ‘WWI period’ German turnbuckle (this one marked NS -or SN-). The lower type is the standard German turnbuckle DIN L75 used during the 30s and WWII. There were also German round cross-section types, without the hexagonal center section.
You can find some of the German WWI norm sheets in WWI Aero, Nr. 120, Pag 71-76.
Marco