Thread: Any ideas on carving a full sized propellor?

One chapter in the 4 volume version of The Practical Woodworker (edited by Bernard Jones and published in the early decades of the 20th century) concerned woodwork on aircraft and gives tips on prop manufacture. Worth a read


Screwing up in new ways every day

I spent some time solving a similar problem - carving a Moebius , big enough to make the size of the block of wood needed quite expensive .So this is how I would do it:
1. carve a smaller model , say on a scale 1/4, from Styrofoam or other soft material
2.Draw parallel lines - very much like the parallels on the globe. Number them
3. Cut at the lines - like a loaf of bread
4. make matching wood pieces for each slice of your model , full scale , a bit bigger to allow for final shaping
5. glue them together to get the desired form
6.Get an Arbotech

Hope that helps.

Originally Posted by Artesano

I spent some time solving a similar problem - carving a Moebius , big enough to make the size of the block of wood needed quite expensive .So this is how I would do it:
1. carve a smaller model , say on a scale 1/4, from Styrofoam or other soft material
2.Draw parallel lines - very much like the parallels on the globe. Number them
3. Cut at the lines - like a loaf of bread
4. make matching wood pieces for each slice of your model , full scale , a bit bigger to allow for final shaping
5. glue them together to get the desired form
6.Get an Arbotech

Hope that helps.

Sounds like a good way to go about it. Thank you.

BTW - carving a Moebius? - it's easy enough to make from a strip of paper

Do you have any photos?

If you smelled, even the smallest of sniffs, that they planned to use this in a real aircraft, as experimental as it might be, run for the hills! Cut those people adrift ASAP.

Most of what I've seen in CDN museums are laminated spruce propellers, 3/4"/18mm pieces.

Originally Posted by Robson Valley

If you smelled, even the smallest of sniffs, that they planned to use this in a real aircraft, as experimental as it might be, run for the hills! Cut those people adrift ASAP.

- I'd shoot them in the knee to save them
To OP: anyone could make the Moebius from a strip of paper- I want it in wood , cofee table -sized....oops

Here is a method I used to make a wooden prop. This one was from cloud point data (scan) which was pretty rough. I had to clean up the scan, then make a cad model from the profiles which was then exported as a stl file for the cnc router. Yes this one actually flies. We have made a number of working props from ultra light to 4 bladed wind machine props.All wooden and all laminated and balanced.