The Dale C. Maley Family Web Site

Wood Toy Airplane

The Dec 2010 issue of Woodworker's Journal has a plan for building a wood toy airplane:

I like to enter my projects into Google sketchup, even though the magazine article has patterns. Here is my Google Sketchup of the model plane:

I have trouble with Sketchup when it comes to blended curves. For the body of the airplane, I gave up on radiusing the blend between the thick front of the body and the skinnier rear...I just made it tapered.

I have the same problem on the wing...it is tapered and blends into the rounded outside edges of the wing. I drew it one thickness first with the curved ends. Then I drew a triangular cross section piece which is the tapered section I want to remove. I moved the tapered piece into position on the wing..........then did an intersection function.  I removed the tapered component........then patched up the wing.  It came out ok using this technique.

I ordered the pilot and 2 sizes of axle pins from the magazine.

Next step is cutting out the pieces and assembly.  I plan on making 2 planes at the same time.

I decided to make a toy wooden airplane.......make two and give one away as a Christmas 2010 gift to a child.

The December 2010 issue of has a pattern I decided to follow. Unfortunately, the pattern is not available online, only in the print magazine.

I found an error in my Google Sketchup drawing of the model airplane...I had the main body too thick, so I corrected it:

The author did not make the main body thickness equal to 1.5", which can be easily made by glueing two pieces of 3/4" stock together.  He chose 1.75" thickness. To get the 1/4" thick piece, I ran the 3" wide piece of 3/4" thick stock thru my table saw in the vertical position.....then turned it upside down and ran it thru again....with the table saw set at 1/4" thickness.  Similar to how this picture shows:

I used the band saw to finish cutting thru the board. I used the rotary planer on my drill press and my belt sander to finish both boards to 1/4" thickness.

Here are the 2 main bodies glued up.  A fellow can never own too many clamps

For the wings, the author set high table saw at 7 degrees and cut the angle on the wing. I tried this but it did not work. My board started to run down into the gap between the blade and the fence. This is not safe.  I switched to my drill press using the Wagner Saf-T-Planer and turning the drill press table to about a 10 degree angle:

Use the Wagner Saf-T-Planer is much safer than trying to saw on the table saw!

Once the main bodies were drying from glueing and clamping, I sawed them to finished size. Then, as the author advised, I drilled all the holes in the main body before I band sawed them. You can't locate to drill the holes once they are band-sawed.

I again used the Wagner Saf-T-Planer to plane back the back end of each plane to narrow up the body:

I wondered how to support the main body after 1 side was planed then turned over to plane the other side. The dummy board shown above worked great.

I used my drill press drum sander to sand all the curved surfaces on the main body and to blend the wide front to the skinny rear section of the plane.

I used my circle cutter to cut out the wheels:

I had the cutter in the position shown on the box, so the outside edge of the wheel tapers back to center. Always be careful using circle cutters because of their big swing which can hit your hand!

I sanded the wheels by putting them on a 1/4" dia bolt in the lathe:

Here are the finished plane wings and wheels:

I made patterns for the main body, wing, and propellor from 3/16" stock, so I can easily make more planes in the future.

Here is the red-winged plane ready to glue up:

Here are both planes with wings being blued to bodies:

To keep the wood pilot from falling out when the plane is flown upside down, a screw is put into the bottom of the pilot and a magnet is epoxied into the bottom of the pilot hole in the body.

I got some US flag decals from Hobby Lobby and the epoxy came from Ace.

I did my usual finishing process on these 2 planes:

-sand 220
-coat 1 of polyurethane
-sand 220
-2nd coat of polyurethane 

Here are the finished planes:

Closing Thoughts on This Project:

There was more work than I thought making these planes. They turned out to be very nice. They are very sturdy and should survive much abuse when children play with them. 

The next model I tackled was a Spearman biplane.

The original plan came from this book:

I entered the plans into Google Sketchup.

I made the engine first. I glued up white oak then used a hole saw to cut out the circle. Then I put it on my lathe to bring the OD to finished size. 

The tough part is figuring out how to shape the fuselage. On the first plane, I held the fuselage vertical in the drill press and used a drum sander to make the front end smooth. I then routed the other edges of the fuselage.  This worked, but the finished plane looks too chunky.

On the 2nd and 3rd planes, I put a scrap piece of wood in the drill press, and drilled about a 1 inch hole to hole the rear of the fuselage. I again manually moved the front of the fuselage around the 3 inch long by 3/4 dia drum sander under it was round. I then chucked the fuselage in the lathe, and was able to turn the fuselage...making it look very aerodynamic.  The lathe also allows you to sand the fuselage very smooth. I then did 3 cycles of lathe sanding and polyurethane to get a super smooth looking fuselage.

Below is the fuselage vertical in the drill press with the 3 inch long drum sander. I used the coarsest drum I had.

I sawed the corners off first to reduce the time to sand the front round:

Here is the fuselage in the lathe:

Below is the jig I used to drill the angled holes for the landing gear. I should probably buy an angled vise to make this easier:

Next are photos at various stages of assembly:

 And now for the finished planes:

Closing Thoughts:

Once you figure out how to finish the fuselage, these planes are not that tough to build. They really turned out very nicely when done.