Re: wood duck 12 transom

Posted by Richard Lincoln on Nov 3, 2007

First off, I realy appreciated all of the dialog around the transom issue. We are truely in this together. I also have a bit of feedback regarding wetting the wood to help w/ the fit.

In building my first MC-13, I wanted to use Sepele for the deck. While having a wonderful grain pattern, the Sepele is very difficult to shape as it seems very britle. We actually blew up the first Sepele deck that we tried on a friends MC (call it R&D).

When installing the second deck, I used a spray bottle filled w/ amonia and wetted the top surface as I forced the bend. The deck took the shape well and gave me no issues w/ splitting or cracking. The amonia idea came from building remote control moedel airplanes and is used to help balsa wood conform to compound curves.

The advantage to amonia over water is that it soaks evenly into the wood fibers, doesn't raise the grain too much and doesn't stain the wood. Just make sure the room is well ventilated and that you wear protective gloves and think about a cartridge resperator as well.

I am interested if others have tried this approach.

Lincoln

In Response to: Re: wood duck 12 transom by CLC on Oct 30, 2007

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