Eagler's Nest
Airframes => Single Seaters => LE => Topic started by: Smokewagen on November 04, 2021, 11:20:40 AM
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Hope someone has done this before and has some advise. I would like to get wide spar material and mill out the parts that I need to build the wing instead of buying a bunch of precut parts. Just trying do this as cheap as I can but as safe as possible and I will be using spruce. Thank you for your help
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Welcome to the Forum. I'm afraid you will not find any Legal Eagle builders that have tried to make their spars from a solid 3/4" thick plank. The waste of expensive spruce would be tremendous! If you look at the plans, the spruce uprights that go between the spar caps are only 1/4" x 3/4" x 5-1/2" in size. The amount you would waste between each upright would be 36, 14-7/8" x 5-1/2" pieces of spruce. I bought two, 3/4" x 4-3/4" x 14' spruce planks. My cost was $266. I got all my spar caps from these and had enough left over for other wing parts. You would need to find two 3/4" x 5-3/4" x 14' and two 3/4" x 7-1/2" x 14' spruce planks to make spars from solid planks. I'd estimate $650 to $750 if you can find spar stock that size. Spar quality spruce is really getting scarce. Here is a photo of LE XL spars without the plywood web.
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Thank you sir for the reply and information. I have a small table saw that can cut wood thin enough to read a newspaper through. It is manufactured for ship modelers and is very capable piece of equipment if I were as capable at using it,lol. I just want to cut all my 3/4 parts from one or two boards instead of ordering a multitude of pieces and getting back home to find I’m short of what I need. Information about the saw can be found at (Byrnes Model Machines)they are very well built and hand made in the U.S.A. I should not have used the word mill as it implied the making of the spar from one piece of wood,I intend to follow the plans completely.
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The two 14' spruce planks I bought from Aircraft Spruce provided all the spar caps and 3/4x3/4 diagonals. My saw leaves a 1/8" kerf, so that is what I allowed for. I did not want to cut all the 1/4x1/4 so I ordered it in 10' lengths. I used 40 of the 10' pieces for my wing ribs & aileron diagonals. 400 feet of 1/4x1/4 seems like too much, but it is not. It takes almost 260 feet just for the upper and lower wing rib capstrips. I also bought a "bargain bag" of spruce from ACS and got all of my small wing parts from this.
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You been a great help. Thank you so much Kamcoman77.