How do I know if what I am looking at is American or Canadian Gutter Pipe? I saw some brown stuff at lowes and had no idea if it was American or Canadian. I am looking for a sorce in the Western Michigan Area.

Plane Addicted

Canadian is 2 3/8" square, and thinner wall than the american. American is 2 1/2" square and has a thicker wall. Most likely what you saw at Lowes is Canadian. It probably has the maple leaf tag on it somewhere indicating that it is Canadian in origin.

George

Web Pilot is right on, the Canadian stuff almost alway has a "Made in Canada" sticker on it.

You could also ask Dan Gipe where he gets his, He is also from Michigan, and has a web site here http://www.spadparts.com

BTW Plane Addicted, I grew up in Zeeland Michigan

I am just getting into the Spad thing and all Lowes in this area have only the Canadian made stuff, especially in brown color. All says Made In Canada on adhesive strip somewhere. You can also tell by price here, the thinner Canadian is almost one half the cost, ie 5 bucks for Canadian and ten for US for a ten foot length. I still have hard time seeing how the thin, flexible Canadian can make a good fus but will find out

All you gotta do is talk to it. If it says, "Eh," and "aboot," on a regular basis, it's Canadian

One option here is to skip the gutter pipe completely! Make your own gutter pipe out of Coroplast and a strip of 1/8" x 1/4" spruce. Put the seam in the middle of the top or the bottom, not on a corner. Use your flute ripper to cut out one flute on each corner, fold, and join with the spruce spline and thin CA. It's lighter and tougher than PVC downspout.

Mkirsh, what is a "flute ripper"?

thanks....very cool tool. i think we will try making our 1 st coro fuse. combat plane. do you use formers and if so where? firewall,wing saddle(front & rear).Fire wall is cutting board mtl from wal mart....how about other formers if any? thanks guys!

You can add a block of styrofoam behind the wing saddle for a former, but that's all you need, if that. I usually slot the tail and the horizontal stabilizer together so they interlock and can't move.

mkirsch, thanks for the pic. looks like your fuse is tapered. can you explain your fold method. ignore flutes when bending? thanks

That's a square fuselage, folded along the flutes. Cut one side of the flute out with the aforementioned flute ripper, and fold.

You can make tapered fuselages, but it takes a bit more work and proper tooling. For tapered folds, use a Dremel tool with a spiral cutting bit and base to make your own flute.