Thom Taylor

I spent about month making the Glider’s wing ribs, 65 of them in all. Each rib was made of Ash that was 3 thin strips of 1/8 inch thick. I used the table saw to cut the thin Ash strips over 200, of 1/8 inch thick. The ash strips were glued up with Titebond woodworkers glue and placed in the rib press and tightened down with about 140 lbs of pressure. I started by leaving the ribs to dry over night. I quickly found the glued rib would dry in about 2 hours, so I could make about 5 ribs a day. With any bending of wood you get a condition called ‘spring back, that’s where the wood after bending wants to spring back to its original shape. Depending on the method used either steam bending or cold bending a certain amount of spring back is expected. Almost all wood bending the wood is placed in to a form, bending to the wood into the shape desired. The most common and traditional way is to use the peg and board method. Where pegs are placed in predrilled holes on a wooden board and the steamed wood is bent around the pegs to the shape desired. Steaming wood to a wet high temperature will soften the wood fibers, as the wood cools and dry’s the wood retains the bent shape. A spring back of 10 to 20 % can be expected and must be compensated for. Cold bending is the laminated process where thin wood strips are glued together and then wrapped around the pegs and sometimes clamped down. Spring back can be around 5%. I found that making a wood press using a cut out shape of the wing rib, a positive and negative side with bolts and nuts connecting the two halves together (see photo) and by tightening the bolts I could put tremendous pressure on the wood causing the glue to penetrate the wood fibers deeper and decrease the drying time to about 2 hours, the spring back was 1% or less and over a period of time the rib held its shape. The resulting wing rib was much stronger then a solid piece of wood cut into the shape of a rib. I then sanded each rib to remove the glue squeeze out that formed. Each rib was 3/8 of an inch square with a chord of 20 and a camber of 1/20. Next up, making the wing spars and attaching the ribs.