Building the gate has proven to be quite an adventure. 

Over the next few days we'll go over how we built the gate... sort of our own project Journal.

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CHAPTER ONE: The Design

The first thing we did was determine how big the original gate was for scaling purposes.  In order to scale the gate, we assumed that the man standing next to one of the posts in the photo below was 65" tall.  In the photo you'll see several 65" rulers that we used to measure the different components of the gate. 

The next step was to transfer the scale measurements to a drawing. At the time I was limited to using Power Point as my drawing program... no high speed CAD program like Joe Perkel is using for his Sopwith Baby Project on the aerodrome. 

Then we reduced the measurements to an appropriate scale ... about 35% of the original... we decided that we wanted the gate high and wide enough for two people to walk through together. Once we scaled it we put a picture in the background for inspiration and to describe what we wanted to do with the gate.

Now that we had the basic design finalized (or at least I thought it was finalized)... it was time to start building it. 

End of Chapter One

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Chapter Two: Carving the Propeller, initial practice

We have never carved a propeller before.  It seemed a bit daunting.  Our gate required a propeller about 30" long.  We first looked for RC Model propellers, but did not find a satisfactory one there... WWI propellers are so unique.  I'm sure there is one out there, but we didn't find it.

Fortunately, Achim Engels of Fokker Team Schorndorf previously published on his website a document called How to Construct An Airscrew The Simple Way.  Using this document as a guide, we decided to give it a go. 

Step one was determining exactly which propeller to reproduce.  We found this one made by Waring & Gillow for a Caudron G3 irresistible. 

This photo is from www.woodenpropeller.com.

We decided that for our first practice attempt we would use balsa wood... since it was easy to work with.  The first step involved creating a scale drawing of the propeller to include the various lamination layers.  Once this was done, each layer was transferred to its own balsa wood sheet.  After cutting out the sheets, the layers were glued together in the appropriate order creating this clunky looking club. 

The blade on the right shows what it looked like after glueing the laminations together.  The blade on the left is after sanding for a few minutes with 80 grit sandpaper on a sanding block.  In essence we used the sand paper to knock off the excess wood, leaving a proper propeller shape.  It was amazingly simple.

Here is the completed prop after sanding and staining.

The balsa prop turned out pretty well and was suprisingly sturdy.

Now that we had the basic concept of how to carve a prop, we were ready to carve one out of hardwood.

End of Chapter Two

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