WRIGHT
BROTHERS Aeroplane Company
To help you gather the materials for your 1902 Wright Glider replica, here are the sources we have found. If you find different or better sources, let us know and we'll post them.
Spruce
You need about 75 board feet of
5/4 (five quarter) aircraft-grade spruce. This wood must be straight-grained,
knot free, and should have a minimum of 14 annual rings per inch. (The tighter
the spacing of the annual rings, the stronger and more stable the wood.) The
best source we’ve found for this material is:
Paxton Beautiful Woods
7455 Dawson Road
Cincinnati, OH 45443
(800) 325-9800
Ask to talk to Jeff Arnold and tell him you’re building a Wright airplane. He will know just what you need.
If the spruce is too pricey, you can substitute straight, close-grained poplar. The strength properties of Yellow Poplar are within 5% of Sitka Spruce. However, it’s also slightly denser and this will add weight to the aircraft.
Ash
You need about 80 board feet of
4/4 (four quarter) straight, clear ash for the bentwood parts of the aircraft.
Also use this material for parts where extra strength is needed, such as the
skid tie bars and the bottom elevator control arms. You can buy ash from almost
any dealer in hardwood lumber, but there’s a hitch. When bending wood,
air-dried lumber is superior to kiln-dried, and most dealers stock kiln-dried
only.
If you want air-dried ash, you may have to dry it yourself. Find a sawyer who own a small saw mill and ask him to saw up the ash you need. Have the lumber quartersawn so the annual rings run from face to face as you look at the end of the board. As you rip thin strips from the edges of quartersawn boards, the grain will be oriented properly for bending. For best results, bend the wood radial to the annual rings, not tangential to them.
If you can’t find a sawyer in your area, call the one we have used and arrange to have the lumber shipped:
Marion Rogers
Covington, OH
(937) 473-3881
Boxwood
The Wright brothers used boxwood
roller skate wheels to serve as the pulleys in their early aircraft. These are
no longer available, but you can still buy boxwood from dealers in exotic woods
and turn your own. We purchased our boxwood from:
Macbeath Hardwoods
930 Ashby Ave.
Berkley, CA 94710
(800) 479-9907
Waxed Twine
The Wrights lashed the frame of
the aircraft together with a material they called "lacing cord" -
waxed twine. Lacing cord is still available today, but no one will know what you’re
talking about. Order "12-cord waxed linen twine" or, if that gets you
a blank look, "#12/3-ply right waxed linen holdfast." Buy 3 600-yard
rolls of the "natural" color from an industrial supplier such as:
McMaster-Carr Supply Corp.
P.O. Box 440
New Brunswick, NJ 08903-0440
(732) 329-3200
Or you can deal with someone who knows exactly what you mean by lacing cord and buy from Ross Walton at:
Vintage Aero Fabrics
18 Journey’s End
Mendon, VT 05701
(802) 786-0705
Mild Steel
To make the wire hardware, you
need about 20 linear feet of 1/4"-diameter steel rod and 30 linear feet of
1/8"-diameter steel rod. For the strap hardware, purchase about 2 square
feet of 24-gauge sheet steel and 4 square feet of 16-gauge sheet steel. Buy
mild, low-carbon steel such as AISI 1018 or its equivalent. Specify hot-rolled
rod and sheet stock - cold-rolled stock is too
brittle.
You may have a hard time finding a dealer in iron and steel who wants to deal in such small quantities. If this is the case, make friends with the proprietor of a small machine shop and have him include your order with his own. The advantage of doing this is that a machine shop is likely to have a metal shear and they can also cut the sheet stock to the widths you need.
Aircraft Cable
Small-diameter aircraft cable is
available through any hardware store. Purchase two 500-foot reels of 7x7
1/16" stranded cable. You’ll also need a swagging tool -
we recommend the Nicopress because it crimps the swages and cuts the
cable. Also buy about 300 1/16" swages.
You’ll probably get a much better deal on these tools and materials from a hardware store, but if you can’t find them locally, try:
Wag-Aero Group
1216 North Road
Lyons, WI 53148
(800) 558-6868
Wing Covering
You need a very tightly-woven
fabric to cover the wings. The Wright bothers did not dope the wing covering of
the 1902 glider for the simple reason that wing dope wasn’t invented until
1908. They simply put up with the loss in lift caused by the air bleeding
through the fabric and kept this to a minimum by using a tightly-woven cloth.
Their choice was a 100% cotton muslin called Pride of the West commonly
used for women’s underwear. It had warp of 107 threads per inch and a
weft of 102 from a total thread count of 209. Spring of South Carolina
manufactures a 100% cotton with a thread count of 197 called Made-Sew-Fine. This
is available through JoAnn Fabrics and other sewing outlets. (The SKU at JoAnn
Fabrics is # 3151271).
Made-Sew-Fine, however, has a heavier denier (thread weight) than Pride of the West, and this will add weight to the glider. You can buy a 100% "glider cotton" with a thread count of 213 and light denier from Ross Walton at:
Vintage Aero Fabrics
18 Journey’s End
Mendon, VT 05701
(802) 786-0705
It’s very, very pricey, but it’s as close to history as you can get without having the fabric woven for you.
If you want durability, cover the glider with a lightweight Dacron. This synthetic material is tough as nails and can be easily washed. Get the uncertified stuff, certified aircraft Dacron had black stamps all over it. You can purchase 1.6 ounce uncertified aircraft Dacron from Jim and Dondi Miller at:
Aircraft Technical Support
9220 Burgett Road
Orient, OH 43146
(614) 877-3334
Whatever fabric you choose, purchase about 55 yards for the glider project. We went through about 1-1/4 45" bolts of Made-Sew-Fine.
