Originally Posted by
mkjohnston
He told me to take a piece of glass and lay it on top of my bench and then lay the leading edge on top and use a steel straight edge and lay it on top and start at the 3/16 inch end all the way down to 1/2 end. you also need to support the whole straight edge by placing another stick of the same thickness under the side you are not cutting. Now carefully clamp it to the bench and start cutting with a sharp Xacto Knife along the edge. he also told me to cut it in spurts and not to try to cut it in one continuous cut as you will you will find it is easy to destroy these Balsa Sticks After having to replace 1 of them I used this method and it works pretty good.
Thank You
Michael Johnston
Here is another way of making tapered trailing edges. You sandwich a piece of balsa between two steel rods one the diameter of the leading edge and one the diameter of the trailing edge of the desired completed trailing edge material. You then can use a razor plane to rough out the size and finalize the shape with a sanding bar. You can use multiple rods to take the material down in stages.