denodan

I may invest in some decent Carbon Fiber Blades. Seems The Blade is not the only Helicopter where the coating on the blades rip off. I think not only will the wooden blades end up looking horrible, but become unbalanced, so think woodern blades are not the way to go afterall, so thinking seriously replacing the wooden blades.

The only other option is strip the coating off the wooden blades and just paint them, but the price of paint and mucking around better off with Carbon fiber.

Why they just don't paint the blades I cannot understand, the plastic coating they have is useless.

i have in the time being placed some tape right around where the plastic coating is cracking, and also evened the other side up with tape also and the same distance to keep it balanced.

What tool do I use the take off and replace the Main Rotors on Blade450 with Carbon Fiber blades?

Coxxie

I have a set of Carbon blades and they are by far the better blades than the wooden blades in terms of performance, balance and stability of the heli and are longer lasting.
The only disadvantage of carbon blades is, is that should you crash, the wooden blades break more easily and thus absorb the impact of the crash more than the carbon fibre blades and thus the wooden blades protect your heli better and prevent the linkages and rotor head from breaking.
In my opinion, use carbon fibre blades for those that are proficient and wooden blades for those that are still mastering the skills.
Also, there is a difference between the quality of the wooden blades as well, the genuine Blade wooden blades are thicker and make the heli more stable whereas, the inferior blades (not Blade) are thinner and causes the heli to be more unstable in flight. 

denodan

The biggest problem with the wooden blades is they don't stand up well, the coating breaks off as the blades are moving so fast. Why did they not just use paint? would have sholved the issues, but the coating is just rubbish, and could cause much unbalancing due to coating pealing off.

Coxxie

Yes, I agree with you that they should have had the wooden blades painted and would probably not have been much more effort either.

Doug47

My Feedback: (24)

Coxxie makes some good points. Especially this one : That is 100 percent true.
However, the criticism of wooden blades is too general. The OEM blades by Blade are better than many of the cheap copies. Sure, with time they'll start to lose their covering, but much of that that you see is from strikes that would ruin an expensive set of CF blades. Don't be fooled into thinking CF blades will withstand an imapact that would destroy a set of wooden blades, it's not true. They may not look as bad as the splintered wood ones but they'll be shot just the same, with an increased likelihood of, just as he said, taking down the main shaft, feathering shaft, etc.,etc..
Painting won't work. The paint, when used enough so that it seals the grain or even to just seal it enough that a high humidity day won't permanently warp them weighs a lot, a whole lot. Some will write 'it worked great for me', well God bless them. When wood blades were the only option it was tried and tried and never did cut it unless they were fiberglassed, epoxy resin sealed, then painted, then balanced, then re-painted...come on.
What did and does work is this: Either strip them and re-cover with high grade model aircraft covering such as MonoKote or Ultracote, or even cheaper and faster, this: Quick UK has available multiple colors of a higher grade heat shrink covering such as is used by maunfacturers of wooden blades. A good hair dryer or heat gun set on low will do the job.
Lastly this hobby has a tendency that gets us all when we're learning, a 'cart before the horse' thing. The single biggest thing to have our blades last a long time is to quit hitting them on stuff . At a third of the price the math is easy.
Doug