I made some offhand remarks a few posts back about the Sopwith floats being "Dinosaurs" in terms of structure. Last night I finished the ribs, rendered the results and had a chuckle to myself..... they look like bones!
CAD Page
Sopwith apparently had a lot of trouble with an earlier version of these coming apart. The earlier versions had rib spacing of six inches -vs- the three you see here. There is a lot of brass screw use for assembly but, no word on assembly adhesives. There is mention in the documentation regarding varnish coatings and continuing problems associated with water saturation.
So I have a basic question as to what adhesives were in use at the time, was it Recorcinol glue?
My thoughts are along the lines of liberal use of West System epoxy to solve bonding and saturation issues but, weight gain is a worry. If I can save material weight in the interior structure re-design, then the hope is to have some elbow room.