Making Balsa wheels.

wonwinglo

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HOW TO MAKE BALSA WHEELS.

Balsa wheels are easy to make and when painted with black acrylic look just like rubber and very realistic.

For the sake of this exercise we will make I inch low pressure wheels such as fitted on early light airplanes,but you can apply this method to almost any type of wheel that you need.

First cut two discs from 1=16 th ply,these will become the bearing holder which is a piece of thin bore brass tube or even plastic tubing to suit your undercarriage shaft,drill the centres now at this stage,next cut a disc from 3 sixteenths of an inch thick hard balsa and glue this in the centre of the ply discs,now re-drill the hole again but this time to properly fit the brass or plastic bearing,next cut two more discs from soft balsa one quarter of an inch thick,in the centre cut another hole with a fretsaw and finish off neatly with a half round file.

Next shape the inside of the two outer discs by rounding off the inside corners and then glue them to the outsides of the piece prepared earlier,when this assembly is dry place an ordinary long nail into the chuck of your electric drill and trap it tightly against the chuck,spin it up and hold a piece of glasspaper against the outside of the balsa wheel,watch as the shape appears to your liking and finish off with fine grit glasspaper,remove from the chuck and place the bearing back into the centre of the wheel,lock in place with a drop of cyno cappilary action will do the rest.

Now with some artists acrylic and a stiff brush paint them black with grey centres ,add two tiny creep marks against the tyre and hub centre and stand back and admire your handiwork !

For early WW1 wheels use two ply discs glued together,cyno pieces of thin rubber tube or something similar on the outside of the rims,make up paper cones larger than the diameter of the disc,cut a slit bringing the edges together,mount your wheels onto the axles and lock in place with a dab of cyno against a tiny paper washer,next glue the paper cones into place,paint the wheel and put a tiny circle where the valve appears in the cone,WW 1 wheels were sometimes dark muddy grey in colour and if you feel like adding ‘Palmer Aero Cord’ to the outside best of luck.

Modern wheels have complex hub centres,study photographs and use your Edding 0.1 pen to represent the various wheel centre details.

Give this a try you will enjoy making them up.
 
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