Sopwith Snipe Project

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Joe Perkel

Nick & Bryan,

What did the Snipe and Tri-plane do here? On the Baby, this is fabric covered, yet thin ply skins were used elsewhere, why not ply skin the leading edge and, why so fancy on this piece of nosing?

The Snipe centre section has different shaped ribs to the wings but the nosing looks much the same as what you have drawn there, also with no ply skin.
I'm in the process of making the centre section at the moment so am also wondering about the best way of routing up that nosing profile.



Nick

[Nick]

Originally Posted by j ferguson

Doesn't this make it likely that you assemble the wing to the mounts, align the daylights out of everything and THEN drill the holes in the attachment fittings?

Must admit that never occured to me. Each fitting has pretty specific angles to drill the holes at in reference to the centreline and I've drilled them that way. Luckily so far it's all aligned okay. But down the track if it doesn't line up you may well find me at the top of a step ladder with a Black & Decker and a 5 foot drill bit!

Cheers, Nick

[j ferguson]

Originally Posted by Nick

Must admit that never occured to me. Each fitting has pretty specific angles to drill the holes at in reference to the centreline and I've drilled them that way. Luckily so far it's all aligned okay. But down the track if it doesn't line up you may well find me at the top of a step ladder with a Black & Decker and a 5 foot drill bit!

Cheers, Nick

Hi Nick,
I found the note to "drill in position" a little spooky. Maybe these things aren't as twitchy as I'm imagining and that rigging can cure any slight variation in those hole locations. But on the other hand???? I, too, thought that trying to drill both holes in one pass seemed pretty unlikely.

Maybe they only meant drill the spar with the fitting in place.



good luck with this and thank you much for tolerating my un-informed questions.

John

[David Paule]

Originally Posted by Nick

I'm in the process of making the centre section at the moment so am also wondering about the best way of routing up that nosing profile.



Nick

I'd take a piece of wood and cut it to width and thickness on a good table saw with a good blade. For plank wood, I like the Forrest Woodworker II blade, which leaves a good finish and cuts well. Certainly other blades will work, too. This would leave a rectangular piece of stock.

Next, I'd get a dado blade to cut the indentations in the sides (as shown on the picture, top and bottom as installed). My dado blade is an Infinity Dadonator, I think, and it's good enough. Now I can't tell from the picture if you really need the dado blade or if the regular blade will work. The regular blade leaves a non-flat finish at the step, while the dado blade leaves a flat there. While making these cuts, the blade will need to be set at an angle, of course.

After that, with the regular blade again, I'd trim the sides of the leading edge area, the flat areas. It looks like the blade would be at the same angle here, too.

Finally, I'd get a suitable router round-over cutter and route the leading edge radius. If you can't find one with the right radius, I'd get one with a smaller radius to rough it in, and hand-finish it from that. Another way would be to mark on the wood lines to denote a flat bevel, plane or rasp to the lines, and finish with a plane or by hand with sandpaper. A template of thin aluminum or colored plastic will be handy but not essential. This is probably the place where I'd be most likely to ruin the strip of wood.

I said "finally" but there's still the back to do. Frankly, for me, I'd rather glue on the back side bumps rather than cutting out the indentations. If you cut the indentations, the time to do that is right after making the rectangular blank. But then the edge that you'd like to have flat on the table saw now has hills and valleys, so that is going to be tough. The next obvious time is to cut these last, but then you're trying to mark and cut something that's shown on the drawing as being perpendicular to the central plane of the piece, where there isn't any wood now. You can make that adjustment and mark things and cut; a band saw, jig saw or similar can be used to make the cuts. Not easy.

This piece would require considerable care. You've got to feed the stock in and keep it up against the fence and down on the table, and as it's a narrow piece, make sure that your hands aren't anywhere near the blade.

[Butch]

The profile of that leading edge is very close to the SPAD. Bill Retzlaff (spadmaker) could show how he made several hundred feet of the stuff. But ErictheGoop expelled him from the Forum in an attempt to add value to this website.
Pete

[David Paule]

Had another thought about making the strip... you could go to a molding shop and have them make a shaper blade with half the profile, and with two passes, make as much for you as you'd wish. More costly, though, but probably less than buying a dado blade and a Woodworker II blade.

[Joe Perkel]

Nick,

I continue to be fascinated by all things Sopwith, from corporate history and operations, to evolution of the designs. Please continue to post pictures of particularly difficult, and or confusing details as you construct this flying piece of artwork!

For my part, (as I await my ever delaying contractor to finish my addition so I can finally get started), I am visualizing how I will document the build pictorially on my web-site. I really really want to see a more varied selection of WWI aircraft attempted, documented, and successfully built.

Thanks for sharing this lovely Snipe!


David,

Your post is a reminder of a skill set yet to be mastered! Thank you for the descriptive details!

[Nick]

Originally Posted by David Paule

I'd take a piece of wood and cut it to width and thickness on a good table saw with a good blade. For plank wood, I like the Forrest Woodworker II blade, which leaves a good finish and cuts well. Certainly other blades will work, too. This would leave a rectangular piece of stock.

Next, I'd get a dado blade to cut the indentations in the sides (as shown on the picture, top and bottom as installed). My dado blade is an Infinity Dadonator, I think, and it's good enough. Now I can't tell from the picture if you really need the dado blade or if the regular blade will work. The regular blade leaves a non-flat finish at the step, while the dado blade leaves a flat there. While making these cuts, the blade will need to be set at an angle, of course.

Finally, I'd get a suitable router round-over cutter and route the leading edge radius. If you can't find one with the right radius, I'd get one with a smaller radius to rough it in, and hand-finish it from that. Another way would be to mark on the wood lines to denote a flat bevel, plane or rasp to the lines, and finish with a plane or by hand with sandpaper. A template of thin aluminum or colored plastic will be handy but not essential. This is probably the place where I'd be most likely to ruin the strip of wood.

I said "finally" but there's still the back to do. Frankly, for me, I'd rather glue on the back side bumps rather than cutting out the indentations. If you cut the indentations, the time to do that is right after making the rectangular blank. But then the edge that you'd like to have flat on the table saw now has hills and valleys, so that is going to be tough. The next obvious time is to cut these last, but then you're trying to mark and cut something that's shown on the drawing as being perpendicular to the central plane of the piece, where there isn't any wood now. You can make that adjustment and mark things and cut; a band saw, jig saw or similar can be used to make the cuts. Not easy.

.

Many thanks David for taking the time to reply to my query about the nosing, it’s much appreciated. Sounds like you’re a keen woodworker. That looks like it would work okay. I don’t have a Dado blade so will give it a go with my standard blade first and see how it goes, maybe try it with some cheap pine first before I make a hash of the spruce.
Your other idea is good too regarding a shaper blade. The centre section nosing is just slightly different to the wing nosing and only a short section to be made. That could be a good way to go though with the wings as have some long lengths to make there.
Learning new skills, that's what this is all about. I'll need a bit of practice with this though

Thanks again

Cheers, Nick

[brinesharks]

Originally Posted by Nick

Many thanks David for taking the time to reply to my query about the nosing, it’s much appreciated. Sounds like you’re a keen woodworker. That looks like it would work okay. I don’t have a Dado blade so will give it a go with my standard blade first and see how it goes, maybe try it with some cheap pine first before I make a hash of the spruce.
Your other idea is good too regarding a shaper blade. The centre section nosing is just slightly different to the wing nosing and only a short section to be made. That could be a good way to go though with the wings as have some long lengths to make there.
Learning new skills, that's what this is all about. I'll need a bit of practice with this though

Thanks again

Cheers, Nick

I think David's approach is good, but I would round over the nose first with a quarter round bit top and bottom, slightly larger than you need. This way the piece can be fed through the router table easily as it still has flat faces. cut the angled grooves using a table saw (blade thickness TBA!). From the drawings it looks like you could still lie the LE flat on a bench. Mark out the areas you want routed out then set you router table fence to the required depth (1/2"?) and manually feed the piece in sideways, then move it along the required (marked) distance. Repeat along the length as required. Clean up the LE profile with a hand plane and check with a template (of the rounded section). Remember to be well rested and not distracted!!! Being a symmetrical cross section you could cut it fairly rapidly as you only have to turn the piece around while leaving the saw/router set.

Testing on pine is a great idea - I plan to do this too! Also, I thoroughly recommend reading through all the back issues of Shopnotes and the whole process should seem a lot more achievable.

Do you want an extra pair of hands/eyes when you try it out? Happy to come down if you think it would help (certainly would help me to learn more!).

[brisfitworks]

Nick:

When we made this stock for our Camel, one of our more creative members took up the challenge.

I was just reading through the e-mails he and I exchanged to remind myself of how he did it and an important note: the Camel LE on the stab is the same shape but a smaller size, so once you "tool up" for the wing you may want to do the one for stab at the same time.

One thing you can see in the dimensions is they planned a sequence - the cap of the mushroom is 1/16" narrower than the base. Sounds a lot like you start with 7/8"x1" and do the angled stem first just as we did. Here is our Bruce's e-mail of what he did (sounds like you could do a similar thing on your mill):

"I have been working on a plan for making the L.E. for the wings. It is more
complicated that I thought at first, but should be OK. I have a moulding
head for use on my table saw, but don't have 13 feet in front and in back of
the saw to push the raw stock through. Instead I'll mill the pieces on one
of the milling machine at work. I made up a mandrel to hold the moulding
head in the mill. The head is just a single interchangable cutter that
mounts in a slot in the circmference of a 5 inch diameter aluminum disc.
With the mill head tilted, I can machine the the top and bottom of the
leading edge with a flat cutter at the proper angle to accept the rib
capstrips. Although the moulding head came with cutters for shaping about
twenty different profiles, the one for Sopwith Camel wing leading edges was
must have been declared obsolete and was hence not one of them. With the
help of some excellent machine shop guys, I've made a cutter to fit into the
slot in the moulding head which will cut the proper shape on the nose of the
leading edge. While I was sick, the guys in the shop finished making the
cutter for me, honed and oil-hardened it and the tried it out on some scrap
pine. I'm told it worked fine although I haven't seen the results yet. The
nose of the leading edge will be slightly oversize to allow for some sanding
after fitted to the ribs."

The one thing he didn't describe was that he machined up a guide in UHMW plastic to feed/pull the spruce through. Clamp the guide in the table vise and feed away!

Bill.

P.S. I just was shocked, Bruce's e-mail was almost 9 years ago to the day! Our poor Camel has been put on the back burner so many times it will be 10years old before it even flies. Thankfully, we've finished up and got flying a Dr.1 and a Strutter and rebuilt every plane in the fleet in that time. It's hard to keep these guys focused