Three guesses:




Is there hope?

That almost looks like a Diamond Dust????

How close am I?

Wrong but almost exactly right.

Look at my avatar..

Noooooooo!!!! That can't be a Screamin Deamon....They have been out of production for a long time.

Nice try though.

This would be the first major step into getting them back into production..

Imagine doing all of that by hand..!

I think you could "short kit" that sucker and leave the kite rod and other pieces that don't require any expertise up to the builder to furnish.
This way, you could wrap the ribs and other jig saw puzzle pieces up tightly and drop them into an envelope.

It's an idea.. the spars and strip/sheet stock are the PITA. But.. I get the spars bulk & cheap. Currently I am figuring on packaging in a bag with header card, and shipping in those triangular postal boxes. But there is work to do here.

I could do short kits though.. at least for the lot around the forum who know what they're getting. It is theoretically possible to split the spars too.. the solid CF joiner rod that fits perfectly inside them is off the shelf. But I don't wanna.

Right now one step at a time.. because of the size of my cutter platen, rather than cut a kit at a time, I am going to cut bulk pieces of each part and simply bundle them. Far more efficient in terms of wood utilization. However, the matrix you see here is one complete 1/8" ply set on a 10" x 18.5" sheet. I might actually prefer the large ribs cut on the bias.

Last night was a BIG milestone, the parts cut beautifully with nice straight kerf and no char - I "signed off" on the settings.

You're looking at the standard parts set - the mkI if you will - same as the last 50 or so. I have a cool built up hatch/servo arm cover assembly to incorporate and a couple of other improvements for the mkII.

Big thing is, I'm not going to stress out over the "business" side of this - I make dick all money on them and it is probably more hassle than it is worth . My day gig does a fine job of burning up most of my energy and ambition throughout the week, and a part time job at the donut shop would net more in one week than shipping 2 kits a day. But I'll make 'em because I want to and some folks seem to want them. My wife retires from teaching this year & she said she'd ship them - you have no idea how good that is for everyone involved, I hate shipping stuff and it's 15 minutes to town. Down the road we'll see what other things emerge from the funk works. The SD25 needs to come out as does it's electric brother. The SD25 is already prototyped and tested, just a couple of tweaks to fix it up for production. I'd dying to get a Jett 35 on one, they sure go on a .15-.25.

Hokey smokes Bullwinkle, laser cut Screamin' Demon parts! I still have the plans and it's always been a "someday project".

Put me in line for 2 short kits!

Dave, subscribed

Funny, I was just thinking of the list of people that have been waiting for them.. and here's one crawling out from the bushes already! (cool!)

Yeah man, if you want to go short kit I can deal with that pretty quick. Today I'm picking up some 1/8" ply and will crank out a few more sets of parts over the next couple of days. I have enough spars for about 60-70 kits.

Need the fins or will you improvise those?

The only issue I am having, is that I'd prefer to supply aircraft ply for the engine mounts. I'm having an issue cutting it cleanly - the high glue content sucks up the energy and I get charring. Higher wattage and a faster travel rate would likely fix that but I'm only 60W. However.. I can cut 1/16" aircraft ply fine, so I think I will provide 1/16" top and bottom doublers, over the laser cut 1/8" lite ply. I'll shift the 2" nose ring up 1/16" to line it up with the crank. This will give a hard surface for the engine and blind nuts. Make sense?

I'll PM you later, if I forget PM me.. ;-)

Cool, good news. I've got one of Mike's original kits still in the box in my basement waiting for me to get that far.


Mark

Crawling out of the bushes, am I? LOL!

Fins? Fins? We don't need no steenking fins!

And for that matter, I can deal with making my own engine mount too, I've got a full woodworking shop and I've got tons of aircraft ply. But any way you want to make it will work for me. I'll build it however you want to produce the kit. But it's no problem to cut my own aircraft ply motor mounts. Either way is fine.

The timing is perfect, I'm doing filling and sanding on a little go fast and I'm looking to do something better with my Jett .46 race engine. Shoot, maybe I'll order a .56!

Yee Haw!

I can probably get rid of a few more kits for you but I'll start with 2 for myself. One to build and one for the kit pile.

Dave

Dupe

You can easily cut 1/8 inch plywood with a 30 watt laser IF you purchase interior grade plywood. Exterior grade plywood, aircraft grade plywood and marine grade plywood all use water proof glue, usually phenolic resin which is very hard to cut with a laser and makes lots of smoke and flame. Interior grade cuts very nice, I have cut 1/4 inch interior grade ply with a 30 watt laser using two passes or so.

You can tell exterior grade plywood by the color of the glue between the wood layers. Phenolic glue is a dark brown. Interior grade plywood will not have the dark brown glue line.

Interior grade plywood is NOT the same as LitePly. It can be manufactured with different woods but I like birch. Almost as strong as aircraft grade and much stronger than liteply but not water resistant.

The ply I get locally is birch 3 ply. I bought 50 square feet today. I've compared it to the lite ply I used on the last runs of kits, and frankly it is more than up to the job.

I can cut 1/4" interior ply in one pass at partial power. Cuts pretty straight with the 50.8mm lens. I bought a 100mm lens too - I cut some 1" foam for giggles, works great.

Water resistance is likely not a big problem.. by the time the ply is in trouble from the water the balsa would have probably left the scene anyway?

Cool more SDs in the air.

I still have a couple of piped .32SX's. Put me down for a kit, too, please.

I'm in...if you have time to add a short kit to the list.

Pete

It will be a bit before I restock all the standard materials to make full kits - my remaining inventory is the 50% of the wood I rejected form the last batch! All stupid light punky stuff, I was PO'ed. I'm going to go to SIG in future.

However, I can crank out a bunch of short kits pretty fast, let's say I'll get those done this week? Today is honey-do day, including fixing the kitchen sink.

I may or may not have good fin stock right now. If not, two clipped delta fins in 1/8" medium hard C grain ain't that hard to hack out up on the bench, a good job ought to take all of 5 minutes. I may have some good material left though, if so I'll cut some. But no problem with all the ply parts which constitute the vast majority of the PITA factor.

I hear you on the honey do list.....fixed the freezer, the coffee table and the dishwasher today.

I used to buy my balsa from national balsa http://www.nationalbalsa.com for my competition pattern planes. they will do hand selection for you.

A short kit with or without fins is fine for me. My balsa stash is more than adequate at the moment. Just send me a Paypal invoice when you are ready. I'll eat the Paypal fee. [email protected]

It's easy for the builder (me) to laminate supplied 1/16 ply pieces to make 1/8.

Since I already have an interlocking engine plate and a doubler laid out, I think I'll just cut the doublers from 1/16" aircraft ply as mentioned, which when epoxied to either side of the 1/8" indoor ply base plate will be a quick, simple and tough assembly.

Hmmm, interesting....I have a spare Jett BSE 50 FIRE with a counterbalanced 2" spinner on the shelf...

What size is the nose ring?

Edit: I see it has 2" nose ring...perfect!

My number 1 go too plane every season. I've got 3 seasons on the same airframe right now.

You're the only guy who's flown one on a Jett .46 with a 2" diameter prop.