Re: MKII Ama question

Posted by Chuck on Sep 1, 2005

Pete:

Although I have not built any Ama's I have built wood composite glider wings and glider aircontrol surfaces with both aircraft spruce wood, foam, epoxy and glass. I would have to agree with CLC that using foam to make an wing shape, epoxied to the exisiting ama support beams and then glassed over would be a lot easier and probably signifcantly lighter in weight than trying to make an entire airfoil shaped support out of wood.

Also using foam hotwire cutting technique, with the use of desired airfoil shape templates to guide the cutting wire, you can cut out almost perfect airfoil shapes from a block of foam. These could then be epoxied to the fore and aft of the ama support beams. This would take alot of the guess work out of trying to free hand carve a nice looking airfoil shape. Then once glassed, sanded, and painted you would have a beautiful wing like support beam that would still give you the strength of the original design but less drag when under sail. Of course if you really want the look of laminated, varnished wood throughout then building and shaping entirely of wood would be the only way to go.

Chuck Cheasapeake VA Almost completed building CLC Chesapeake 17

In Response to: Re: MKII Ama question by Petewp on Aug 31, 2005

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