New Zealand 1909 - bamboo for building flying machines

[Varese2002]

I recently came along a small message from the Otago Witness [New Zealand] , Issue 2890, 4 August 1909, page 51

AEROPLANE. - So far as we can ascertain no bamboo poles 16ft in length are procurable in New Zealand. They would have to be specially imported. The longest poles stocked in Dunedin are 9ft in length. Aluminium is not usually stocked in any quantity. At present Messrs A. ad T. Burt's stock is reduced to one sheet. The cost is 2s 6d per Ib. If you required any large quantity it is probable you would have to specially order it.

Thinking about this little message in this NZ paper I was struck by the idea that surely there were not that many aircraft builders in NZ who wanted bamboo (16ft) and probably still less of them who used aluminium. That's in August 1909.

But probably the message was thought to be of use for budding builders in NZ ?

Cheers

Kees

[aerohydro]

Like most westernised countries in the early 20th Century, New Zealand had it's fair share of would-be aviators.

In the 1900-1914 era, there were several gliders and aeroplanes built and tested in the Dunedin, Otago area of New Zealand. At the time, Otago was probably one of the wealthiest and most prosperous areas of the country. Though the gliders had varying degrees of success, none of the locally built powered aeroplanes proved successful. As far I as I remember, all of them were of wooden or bamboo construction.

The mention of the alumimium is interesting, as south of Dunedin and Otago lies Southland, and it was there, in 1910, that a local engineer called Herb Pither designed and built and tested a monoplane that had an all metal airframe. Pither was a builder of bicycles, and so made use of all-steel bicycle tubing in it's construction. It *may* have even flown.

Five years ago, a fairly faithful replica of the Pither monoplane was built:



And that replica did fly. Here's are a couple of posts I'd done at the time about it:

• click 1
  
• click 2

There is currently a large part-work account, appearing in the Journal of the Aviation Historical Society of New Zealand (AHSNZ), and authored by Best and Martyn, that details many, if not all, of the pre-WWI flying machines designed and built by the Kiwis.

Paul

[Aquilius]

Thanks Paul, for showing the Herbert John Pither monoplane here again!


I remember from somewhere a mention that stated Pither also built the propeller on his own - out of aluminium. Can this be verifiyed?
Your picture is showing a wooden prop and I can't enlarge the contemporary photographs in the site you linked.
Are there any bigger scans to find?


Just these note about shortcomings of bamboo sounds truely curious to me too. Isn't bamboo easily growing in NZ? Though in this time there was probably not much planted.
And maybe kauri wasn't suitable for that purpose?
(I'm referring to the tree not the shells , though this is "cowry" in english)


Cheers

Aquilius

[Mad Mac]

Bamboo was very probably growing in the North Island of New Zealand in 1909 and it would have been longer than 16ft too. Just about anything grows well here and I know of one stand of giant bamboo here that is 9 inches thick at the base and 60 ft high. However perhaps not much of it was available in 1909, (only 69 years after European settlement!). In the South Island around Dunedin the climate is a lot colder than in the North Island and as bamboo is a semi tropical plant it may have been hard to obtain down there.

NZ Kauri is an amazing timber and I imagine it would be well suited to aircraft construction. Not sure if it was used though.

[aerohydro]

I remember from somewhere a mention that stated Pither also built the propeller on his own - out of aluminium. Can this be verifiyed?

IIRC, contemporary reports had that the propeller was aluminium, and the photographs of the original monoplane certainly support that. However, it may not have been a cast, solid aluminium propeller, but rather a conventional wooden one, which then was sheathed in sheet aluminium. I think the latter is more likely to be the case. At a NZ motorcycling website, there is a 2008 article on Pither. About half way down the page is some text that hints that this is the case. A selection of photos can be found at the bottom of the page.

The replica's use of a purely wooden propeller is the only significant deviation from the original, and that I think is really more a visual distinction than anything else.

Your picture is showing a wooden prop and I can't enlarge the contemporary photographs in the site you linked.
Are there any bigger scans to find?

Alas no, ASAIK. The small images of the contemporary photographs are on the Croydon Aircraft website. At the time the site was put online, I suspect that bandwidth issues would have been a big factor in determining the image sizes to use.

Several sites offer good images of the replica. This one is from flickr:



This one is from Picasa:



This is just one of a dozen or so images of the replica that can be found at Jerry Chisum's Picasa Album.

Paul