F4U Corsair Carved Wooden Airplane

The best presents are something that came from the heart, and if you are lucky hand made for the person receiving it. With the Corsair holding a special place in my heart, it made sense that my mother would appreciate a small Corsair to keep fresh the memory of me building model airplanes on her kitchen table as I grew up. This project features the basswood model that I made for her.

Material

The whole model is made from basswood because its light coloration allows it to be easily stained very true to the stain color pallet. Additionally the very straight and uniform grain of basswood makes if very easy to carve. It can be bought in different thicknesses which minimizes the shaping required for the wings and tails. The base is a rough cut basswood slab.

Tools

1. Fixed blade knife (I like drywall knifes)
2. Chisel
3. Small hand Plane
4. Sandpaper (80-320 grit)
5. Sanding block (Great Planes Easy-Touch are really nice)
6. CA Glue
7. Paint brushes
8. Rags
9. Fine tip Sharpie
10. Paint (Testors Enamel)
11. White
12. Silver
13. Matte Black
14. Navy Blue
15. Wood Conditioner (Minwax Water Based Pre-Stain Wood Conditioner)
16. Wood Stain (Minwax waterbased semi transparent, Island Water)
17. Wood finish (Minwax polycrylic)
18. 
    

I knew from the get go that I wanted to make a Corsair, but in reality the process is the same regardless of the subject that you choose. All that you need is a 3 view (Front, Top, and Side) of the aircraft. With that you can copy the drawing into PowerPoint to scale it to your liking. This drawing is then used as a template and is attached to the side and top of the rough wood with double sided tape. The only think pay attention to is that if the wings are angled from the front, then the top down view of the wings will show that they are shorter in span than you would get if you cut out exactly to the top drawing

To make the rough pieces of the aircraft, basswood pieces are cut down and glued together to get to shapes that are more easily workable. There process is different between the different pieces so I will break it down a little more

Fuselage

The fuselage was made by stacking rectangular pieces of wood together until the required thickness was achieved.... easy

Wing

Being that the subject matter here is a Corsair, the wing is about as hard as any aircraft could be... The gull wing design adds the distinct W shape to the wing. To achieve this shape and make something that is easy to carve, the inboard wing joint is just a butt joint that makes the correct angle. This is plenty strong because it will be reinforced by the fuselage. The joint at the semi-span is a shallow angle scarf joint that bonds to the upper surface of the outboard wing. This joint can be tricky to cut because of how low the angle is. To do this I used a razor saw to get it close. Then place both of the scarfs on the edge of a table (one on top of the other) and sand both pieces with the sanding block. The outboard section is a piece of cake by comparison since its just cut to the shape and then once bonded to the scarf joint the extra is removed.

Tails

The tail is the easiest part of the plane. The rough cut is made by cutting the profile shape from the template out of a sheet of basswood that is close to the right thickness

Propeller

The propeller blades are made by transferring the template of the aircrafts front view to a piece of wood that is thick enough to carve the blade from.

With all of the pieces roughed out, the rest of it is as easy as removing everything that isn't part of the finished model. That's a silly description of the process, but one that talks to the fact that everything starts oversized and is then honed to the final shape. Patience, working in small increments across the entire model to inclemently increase the fidelity of the entire piece, and using tape to help protect areas that are finished will allow the inner model to be freed.

Fuselage

With the oversized rectangle bonded together with CA glue, the template of the top view and the side view were attached to it with double sided tape. First the side view is cut out with a coping saw. It can be tricky keeping the saw perpendicular to the surface while cutting, but staying as square as possible ensures that the profile of the model is accurate. The off cuttings are saved and then taped back on to the blank. This allows the top view to be kept preciously aligned with the side view. The top view is then cut out again with a coping saw. This cut is likely to be more challenging as airplanes are often taller than they are wide. Once a squared off version of the aircraft is made, then it's time to whip out the knife to start rounding out all of the corners. After the shape is close, then you can start using a sanding block to smooth out the knife strokes and bring the fuselage to the final shape.

Wing

The inboard and outboard wing sections were glued together before starting the shaping so the joint could be made smooth as on the real aircraft. The rough wings were then shaped using a hand plane to remove excess material from the trailing edge and leading edge. The plane allows for much faster material removal, as compared to a knife, as it can take uniform strips out entire length of the rough stock. After the wing was close to shape a knife was used to blend the transition section, and then the entire wing sanded with a block to the final shape.

Tail

The tails were shaped a lot like the wings, except for due to their size it all went ALOT quicker. They were done mostly with a sanding block, as I didn't have a way to hold them to hit them with a hand plane.

Propeller

The propeller blade blanks were carved down to the rough shape with a knife. If you are a nerd like me you can include the appropriate twist based on the direction of rotation of the blades. Once they are roughed to shape the blades can be sanded to the final shape.

Assembly

All of the pieces of the model were assembled with thick CA. It provides 20-30 seconds of time from contact until it is set. Care must be taken to minimize the gaps between parts because CA will NOT take wood stain, and would either show up as a clear spot or white. (Note: I only use accelerator on things I am going to paint. Otherwise accelerator it will often turn what would otherwise be clear CA into a white mess)

Staining is a nerve racking part of any woodworking project. All the work that has been put in to this point can be for not if it doesn't turn out the right color. To make sure that I would be pleased with the result I did a number of sample pieces prior to attempting the aircraft. When doing samples it is important to try it on both the face grain and the end grain of the wood as the absorption between the two can vary significantly. One way to minimized the difference in absorption is to apply a wood conditioner. After the conditioner has been allowed to dry then the stain can be applied as it normally would.

With a lack of painting experience doing these types of markings I was nervous that I would paint something that I would later have to remove. To make this easier I first put down 2 coats of the water based polyacrylic to seal in the stain and provide some thickness incase I needed to sand off any mistakes. The each color of the marking was done in between different layers of the polyacrylic. Doing it this way added a lot of steps, but did make me feel a lot less nervous while doing it.

All of the layers of markings were masked out with either packing tape (because it leaves an extremely clean line) or regular painters tape. Then all I that was needed was to paint in between the tape.

The control surface lines were done by laying everything out with pencil, then using a straight edge, tracing over with a fine tip sharpie. The result was a crisp line, which is protected under another layer of polyacrylic.

The base was made from a rough cut log I found in the craft store. I initially tried to carve the F4U (Navy designation for the aircraft) into the base extremely smoothly so that I could stain it to match the aircraft. However I quickly realized that with only a 1/4 inch chisel, that it was a unrealistic goal. So instead I leaned into the rustic nature of the wood base and left the cut marks visible. I then taped around them with masking tape to protect the rest of the wood, and then held it upside down over a lighter to darken the wood with the flame. Overall, I think that the process worked well, but at the lower corner of the F the tape's glue melted some and left a dark spot that I was unable to remove... But ooooo well we already settled on rustic right!

The model is held to the base with a with a bent brass rod. The rod is drilled into the base as well as the underside of the airplane. Because the tip of the rod is at an angle, the aircraft can be rotated on it so that it may be presented in different orientations.