Cut-down prop

Yesterday it was a lovely day – warm and sunny – and today was forecast to be the same. But it wasn’t. The sun never really managed to break through the cloud, so although I had arranged to fly today and had topped up the X-Air yesterday in readiness, I decided to back out in the hope that there’ll be a better opportunity during the coming week.

So I busied myself doing a few little things that I’ve been putting off and later on, when it brightened up a bit and became a little bit warmer, decided that I’d make best use of my time by trimming the Weedhopper’s ‘new’ prop down. I’d previously calculated that I needed to reduce it’s diameter from 67″ to 66″ so that’s what I cracked on and did. Here’s a shot of the tips that I cut off.

I took care to try to match the shape and profile of the cut-down tips as closely as I could to the originals and here are a few of shots of where I got to today.

Here’s a full-length shot of the prop after I’d trimmed it down and also rubbed down the small areas where it’s protective coating had been damaged and the underlying wood had become marked.

And finally, a closer-in shot of just one of the cut-down prop’s blades

I carefully weighed the prop after reaching the above stage and as far as I can tell, I was pleased to find that it’s still perfectly balanced in both planes ie suspended in its centre ‘flat’ and ‘on-edge’. That means that I can now go ahead and finish smoothing it down and then re-coating it, preferably with a clear epoxy-type varnish. I’ll have to see what I can lay my hands on tomorrow.