I just got a set of plans that I wish to cut my own wood from the plans. Two part question... What is a good way to transfer from plan to wood to make the cuts? If this does not work out for me who is a good kit cutter? Thanks for looking.

I'm unsure of what you wish to know regarding cutting your own wood from plans. What will you use for cutting the wood. Circular saw, band saw, scroll saw ??? Are you referring to cutting sticks, sheets, blocks,etc? What manner do you plan on transferring from plans to material?

The easiest way is to get the plans copied, making sure the copy is exactly 100% size in both directions. Cut the part out of the copy of the plan and use 3M 77 spray or Elmer's Repositionable glue stick and stick the cutout on the wood with the grain aligned the right way and cut the wood to the copy, leaving just a bit, IE cut to the line but not into it. Once the part is cut out, then sand to the line. Peal the paper off and you have a part.

I have tried to use carbon paper and trace the part onto the wood, but that doesn't work very well as you cant tell when the wood shifts a bit and the line is way less that something you can work with.

Before cutting, you want to lay out a s many parts of the same thickness as you can on a stock sheet of wood. You can save 30% to maybe 50% of your wood cost if you do the Nesting well.

As for tools, if you don't have a band saw, or a Scroll saw, you can get by with a Coping saw with the finest blade you can get. I'm an ex Jeweler, so I use one of my jewelers saws with a very fine blade. The jewelers blades break quite easily, and theycan get alittle expensive if you are not carefully with them.

When I first started building I would snag one of my dad's double edge razor blade to cut out my Comet kits. Many a cut finger later, I discovered breaking the blade in half and covering what was the center with tape and I had an almost friendly blade. They didn't work very well on the hard wood in the kits and I was forever breaking parts, but that gave me a lot of repair experience for later in life and a lot of enjoyment.

If you arecareful, and have moderate wood working skills, you will do quite well cutting your own.

Don
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There is 100 ways to do this, this is mine.

Go to art store and buy tracing paper "Vellum" and 3M "artist" adhesive and dust mask.

Vellum is tough and you can draw and sand and saw it and it holds up better than thin paper
3M "Artist" adhesive is thinner than the 3M 77 glue and peels off easier.

Trace out your part, cut out 1/2 inch bigger in size.

Take outside, place tracing upside down on news paper and spray. Getting spay glue in lungs is really bad so use dust mask at least!
Take tracing off news paper when it gets sticky and then stick it to your wood.
Cut out wood part, peel off tracing when done. If using 3M 77 the wood will have some sticky residue on it.

These days there's a nicer and cheaper way than using Sprayment. It's in the form of Post It glue sticks. Coat the back of the vellum tracings and allow to dry for a few hours. Then simple press the Post It templates onto the wood and cut along the lines and do any final sanding to shape. Peel off the template and stick it onto a sheet of paper for storage. And best of all there's no residue left on the wood if you wait long enough for the Post It glue to "dry". It never really dries of course. But you need to wait for it to reach the proper level of long term stickiness.

Also with Post It glue you don't need vellum. A GOOD AND ACCURATE photocopy will do nicely Or even a tracing paper copy from some art store paper. These papers will fray if sanded the wrong way. But if you move the sanding block in a diagonal stroke so it cuts against the paper downwards against the wood you'll get lovely results.

I use tracing paper, it doesnt take as long as you might think. Then stick it to the wood using 3M77 spray adhesive or something similar. Just a light dusting of spray adhesive. You dont want the templete stuck on so good you cant get it off. I cut to within a 1/16" or so then finish sand up to the line with a 1" verticle belt sander. On parts that are the same, I can stack and stick them together (with spray adhesive again) up to about 4 high with out too much problem and finish sand to the line. But you have to be absolutely sure the verticle belt sander is properly adjusted. I've seen some guys us a router table with hard templates, which would be good for multiple planes being built. I've also seen guys us an oscilating drum sander. Lots of ways to do this.
Edwin

I use tracing paper to trace the parts. Then use spray glue and attach them to a 1/4" ply. Cut them out with a scroll saw and sand smooth (pic 1). I set up a trim router with a stright cutting bit with a bearing on top (pic 2). 4 stright pins hold the balsa while cutting parts. Use high speed on the router to pervent tearout. As you can see (pic 3) I cut all the wing ribs in about an hour and everyone is absolutely the same. This set up works great for me. I'm building a Das Ugly Stik from plans. All the wing ribs were the same size but with different cutouts for spars. Cut the ones with the same cutouts first then opened whatever cutouts I needed for the next group. Hope this helps.

Another approach that Iuse is to trace the parts in CAD. You can the stretch to the exact sizes, Make as many copies of the part as you need and place all on a rectangle representing the wood you will be working with. I found out my old Epson Photo printer will print roll feed, so I have a roll of 24# ink jet paper that I print my parts on. From there, it you just attach the print to the sheet of wood by the methods above, I have to try the sprayment, and start cutting. As BMatthews said be sure to sand in one direction so you don't fuzzy the line. If you print with a very fine line width, you get near if not equal accuracy compared to a laser cut part.

I've attached two screen shots of parts laid out for cutting. The first is ribs for a Ruperts Dad that I built. Most printers will print on Legal size paper, so I showed both the standard, RED, and LegalGREEN size papers along with the BLACK 3x36 sheet size for roll feed. The second is a set of ribs for a glider, actually two setson 3x36 sheets.

Don

I recently started using a router for a lot of things. I tend to make things like rib templates out of 1/8" ply so it works well. A thin veiner bit can notch strips so you can construct a TJI style beam spar with really good glue joints on the shear webs.

Trace the part on the plan using tracing paper & a soft pencil like a 2B.

Turn the paper over, place on the wood then draw on top of the lines on the paper on the reverse side.

The lines will transfer to the wood.

Quick, easy, no glue, no solvents, no printers - just pencil & paper. - John.