Alright guys,

this is kind of a funny story. I was in my father in law's car the other day and saw that he had some snacks between the seats. Turns out he's gluten intolerant so he now has an interesting diet. So I take a look at the snacks and see they are packaged in a nice square dense package. They are... rice cakes I guess. But these are different than the round, fluffy kind I know. They are square and about 1/8" thick and... quite dense! I pick one up and immediately I decide that these would just make great formers in a 25-40 size model. I hold it between my thumb and index finger on the sides and try to collapse it. I figured it would crumble right away - not! The darn thing wouldn't implode. Of course, as soon as I applied a little flex while pressing, then it did snap but bear with me...

The weight is virtually nil, perfect thickness for formers and, if laminated with some CF veil on either side, I bet would be lighter than balsa of the same thickness. Once the epoxy has been added to make the carbon/rice/carbon laminate, it may weigh comparably to a balsa/carbon sandwich. The trick really would be to make sure the CF veil is stuck well all over the cake which is actually quite flat compared to other cakes (but not as smooth as balsa). I bet that they could also be sanded smooth prior to being laminated!

I'm going to have to try this out just need me some CF veil!

What do you guys think?

David.

P.S. BTW, the one in the photo is cracked into three pieces (my son's experiments) but it breaks clean so I was able to join it so that its hard to see that its broken [8D]

Ah, the first airplane that is eatable. Are you going to cover it with rice paper.

Bruce

Bruce,

now wouldn't that be cool! A rice made and finished airplane. Heck, you could probably make fuse sides out of this stuff. Certainly radio trays - would just have to find the cakes in big enough sheets...

David.

the sandwich idea is a great one.

OK......April Fools' Day is over!

Maybe the FAA will cut us some slack if they know we're flying environmentally friendly biodegradable planes.

I would worry about attracting mice/rats with such models.


Ed Cregger

Oh, I'm not worried about that Ed. We're old pals me and the rodents. They keep me company while sanding... There are also numerous spiders that decend in the wee hours and roam around on my bench. I figure its good company and they keep the workshop free of those horrible centipedes.

I'd like to see them ROUS pass some carbon fiber while they're at it. Actually, the use of it would be very much like carbon/balsa/carbon formers are used in F3A - there would be no rice to be seen unless lightening holes were cut into the formers. And if there were, one could use a rim around the lightening hole.

In the tropics were we used to once have a house, it was quite amazing to see the termites - amazing creatures. They could bore straight through reinforced rebar concrete to make it from one house to another. Then, once there, they would proceed to chomp on anything organic. Your couches and tables would literally be in bits within weeks. Over the years we learned some lessons - no wood, no fabric. Glass, metal and as little plastic as possible. Even the metal was a problem - but that was the salty air. Glass was really the only material that would last. But its pretty uncomfortable to sleep on it...

David.

It sure would be a great materialto buildARF's with . . .
.

They could eat formers for lunch so they would not have to leave the ARF factories.