Balsa...

[patchz]

[color=#000000]just flys better.

[EJW]

Cool texture!

[hhomebrewer]

I was always a Comet models kind of kid...

[patchz]

Cool texture!

[color=#000000]Thanks. I started out to try and get an old gray look and when I got to the making it look old part I got the idea for woodgrain.

[patchz]

I was always a Comet models kind of kid...

Sorry, I don't follow you. :-?

[Boikat]

I was always a Comet models kind of kid...

Sorry, I don't follow you. :-?

"Comet Models" was a company that used to produce balsa wood scale model kits, some for display, some for flying (gliding, mostly, IIRC. Just slightly before my time, but they were still in business when I was a wee lad)  They were pretty big before plastics came out.

[hhomebrewer]

You have to be near 50 to remember Comet models. They may still be out there; I don't know. They had the pieces patterns screen-printed on the wood. You cut them out with a single-edge razor blade and glued them together over the plan, which was covered by a piece of waxed paper. The longerons were 1/16 x 1/16 inch balsa strips. You glued those to the bulkheads. Slowly, the airplane would take shape. The trouble was always in making the canopy from the flat piece of stiff, transparent plastic they gave you. It would never fit tight and always spring off. Another was the nose area and the propellor. Comet models were rubber-powered. You wind up the prop and let her go. Wind it up too much for that longer flight, and the tension would crush the model from tail to spinner. Ask me how I know that...

From eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/VTG-COMET-TAYLORCRA ... 286.c0.m14

[patchz]

Ok. That was probably when I was in my twenties and my interests did not include aircraft of any kind. Too busy with pistol matches, hunting and CB radios. I do remember some less complicated 2d models a few years earlier though. They came on a sheet of balsa that you had to cut out the pieces with an Xacto (sp?) knife and put slot B into slot A, etc.