Wood Propeller Fabrication

This tutorial will show the steps needed for anyone to carve a propeller out of wood.

Step 1: Obtain Propeller Cross Sections

First you must have full size cross sections (about 10, from root to tip) of your propeller. There are tools online for designing propellers, but you will need some CAD software to create the drawings and 2-D cross sections. I used CATIA, but any 3-D modeling software will do. (I also have a detailed instructions on design of propellers here (www.aerodyndesign.com) Of course you will have to print out the cross sections of the propeller on to paper, at full scale size. Because you will need to cut them out and glue them to thin peice of aluminum or tin.

Step 2: Choose Your Wood and Prep It

You will need to choose your wood. This propeller is made of Hard Maple. If you are creating a propeller for acual load bearing use, you will need a hard wood like Maple. You then cut your wood into thin boards and glue them together like in the picture. You must glue them together with no gaps. You will need lots of clamps.

Step 3: Cut Out Paper Templates and Glue to Thin Sheets of Metal

You will now glue your templates onto thin sheets of metal, and then you tin snips to cut out the cross section.

You will need to file down the rough edges because the template needs to be dead on.

Typically you will want about 10 stations, or 10 cross sections from blade root to tip

Step 4: Cut the Propeller Profile

By marking the profile of the propeller (looking down on the wood) you can use a hand saw to cut out the profile of the propeller, this will save you time when you go to 'hog out material'

Step 5: Begin Hogging Out Material

Now this is the most time consuming part, you will use a chisle or draw knife, or any cutting tool to start widdling away wood material until you can start fitting on you templates to see where material needs to be taken out.

Step 6: The Fun Part Is When You Get Down to the Templates

Once you have hogged out most of the unwanted wood, you can now use the templets and hold them up to the correct stations along the blade to see where material needs to be removed. Be careful not to remove too much, you can't put it back once its gone. The hardest part will be the root area, were the templates are hard to align. Marking the front and back of the propeller with a small notch will help align the templates.

Step 7: Final Step Is to Sand and Add Stain

You can use sand paper to sand down and smooth out the contour. Be sure to start will rought paper 40 grit to 100 grit, and work you want down to a nice 600 grit or finer. Then you will apply some water proof finish. If it is an outdoor propeller you will need to use a thick water proof varnish. This propeller is for an airboat (http://www.aerodyndesign.com/FAN_BOAT/FAN_BOAT.htm)

Step 8: Propeller Duplicator

If your really ambitious, you can make a propeller duplicator, which can more or less duplicate anything, but right now its duplicting a propeller, so we call it a propeller duplicator.

I might make an instructables on how we made it, but for now some pics and a video here: http://www.aerodyndesign.com/PROP_DUP/PROP_DUP.htm

video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2413717528443348681&hl=en

Comments

[CLaygaspard5]

Is there a method for balancing the propeller

[alkeshvar]

Can you help with cross sections of a cessna 172 propeller?

[Josebarronjr]

Where can I get legible propeller cross sections?

[AeroEngineer]

http://www.aerodyndesign.com/PROP_10/PROP_10.pdf

[MohammadJ54]

I really want to made an air trike light

[David Hoskins]

what type of varnish and/or clear coat did you use to finish it?

I'm just about done with a test prop for my ultralight and want to make sure I use the right finish.

[Swansong]

Beautiful work!

[kaie9]

How do I make a 3d model? Like, so that it has the right pitch and width and whatnot

[cburgess7x]

Hey man, just wanted to say... fantastic job, and I would LOVE to make
one for an airplane I'm going to build, not an RC one like everyone
thinks, but an actual plane that I myself can climb into and pilot,
would this propeller do the job? I noticed it was designed for an
air-boat and my train of thought says that if it's powerful enough to
push a boat with 2 people over swamp and grass, it should be able to
taxi and pull a plane into flight, right? Well anyway, I have scoward
the internet everywhere and it's surprisingly hard to find an actual
real propeller for a real plane that I can potentially use for said real
plane, and the ones I do find cost more than my car, and designing one
takes a s*** load of math, I'm not even going to include the fact that I
never actually carved anything out of wood except for sharp points on
thin sticks with my pocket knife, so yeah, this looks like the most noob
friendly propeller design, I couldn't make sense of that propeller
designing app, but this is obviously not stuff you can learn in 10
minutes. So would just like to know if it could work as a plane
propeller. The plane will be a small single passenger aluminum plane linked below, it says balsa wood, but I'm gonna make it out of aluminum.

RC Glider Plane Balsa Frame 3D CAD Model Download | 3D CAD Browser

[AeroEngineer]

Cburgess,

Thanks for the questions. Also, thanks for good laugh. I would not recommend using this for a flight vehicle. It is not qualified to the correct loads, and could come apart in flight. This will be a problem if you don't have a safe place to land. I would recommend just guying one from an ultralight website. Or getting the plans for a real flight propeller at an ultralight website. Some examples:
They are actually pretty cheap:
http://www.powerfin.com/Pricing.html
http://www.arrowprop.com/up.htm
http://www.competitionaircraft.com/
http://www.ivoprop.com/inflightultralightmodel.htm

Best of luck,

Mike

[SalvatoreA1]

Hi

what did you use of type of glue or epoxitic thank you

[BloodyFingers]

I'd like to make one to put a clock in it for on the wall

[AeroEngineer]

Very cool

[shaik azmatullah rahaman]

firstly i want to thanking you for keeping this website,

it is possible to make propeller with bamboo composite fiber material instant of wood?

yes or no

yes means why

no means why

thanking you.

[AeroEngineer]

Maybe, bamboo is super hard. Might take forever to carve, but might be possible

[hohum]

VERY NICE!! how about how many hours from start to finish do you think it took to make the prop?/

[AeroEngineer]

1 day to glue wood
2 nights to dry
1 day to carve it (12 hrs)
Voila.

[imbiglarry]

This is extremely impressive. Congratulations on completing a project like this. It's clear you're a master of your craft :)

[jimbir]

can you lead me to any of the sites that have the propeller design tools you speak of in this article?

Thanks. Jim Birke

[AeroEngineer]

http://www.aerodyndesign.com/ANALYSIS/ANALYSIS.htm

http://www.mh-aerotools.de/airfoils/jp_applet.htm